LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

University  of  California. 

GIFT  OK      ^^ 

Class        -i^  O  • 


CouMT  Leo  Tolstoi 

/\UTriO^O^^^^^ER  sonata" 


-  r        =CHICAGO.  p       F 

CHARLES  H.SER6EL&  CO 

-  318  DEARBORN  ST. 


r 


TOIL 


LEO  TOLSTOI  and  TIMOTHY  BONDAREFF 

/ 


TOIL 


In  the  sweat  of  thy  face  thou 
Shalt  knead  thy  bread. 

Gen.  111:19. 


Translated  from  the  Russian  by 

B.  TSEYTLINE  AND  A.  PAGES 


And  from  the  French  by 

JAMES  F. 

ALVORD 

UNIV^ 

s>^^U 

CHICAGO 

CHARLES  H.  SERGEL  &  CO. 

ComuQHT,  1890,  BY  CHARLES  H.  SERGEL  &  CO. 


,/ 


TOIL 

INTRODUCTION 

How  Toi/  was  composed. 

The  peasant  Bondareff,  inspirer  of  Tolstoi's  social 
theories.  The  two  laws  of  humanity:  Manual  labor  is  the 
law  of  men;  child-bearing  is  the  law  of  women.  Criticism 
of  Bondareff  by  Tolstoi.     The  Bible  and  the  Gospel. 

How  one  must  interpret  the  theory  of  manual  labor. 
Toil  on  the  land,  a  social  remedy.  Extent  and  conse- 
quences of  this  theory.  Bondareff's  book.  Remarks  up- 
on the  translation. 

Toil  is  the  work  of  Count  Leo  Tolstoi  and  the  peasant, 
Timothy  Bondareff.  But  it  has  had  no  joint  work,  prop- 
erly speaking.  This  book  is  composed,  in  fact,  of  two 
different  studies  which  are,  as  it  were,  the  two  different 
parts  of  one  single  book,  one  by  Leo  Tolstoi,  entitled 
Toi7  and  Bofidarcff'  s  Theory,  and  serves  as  a  preface  to 
the  essay  of  the  latter;  the  other  by  Bondareff  which  is 
called  Toil,  by  the  peasant  Bondareff,  and  which  con- 
tains three  main  chapters,  which  we  have  named; 


vi  TOIL 

I.  Introduction.     Life  of  Bondareff .  Aim  of  his  work. 

II.  Toil,  according  to  the  Bible. 

III.  Appendices.     Love  and  Toil.   Bondareff' s  Will. 
Bondareff  is  a  peasant  of  the  district  of  Manoussiliak. 

He  belongs  to  that  class  of  country  people,  numerous 
in  Russia,  who  seek  truth  in  the  sacred  writings.  But 
while  most  know  only  the  Gospels,  Bondareff,  who 
belongs  to  the  sect  of  Sabbatists,  reads  little  but  the  Old 
Testament.  Hardly  knowing  how  to  spell,  he  has  stu- 
died out  each  verse  painfully,  and  from  the  beginning 
he  believed  he  had  found  the  solution  of  all  social 
questions.  He  has  found  formulated  in  Genesis  the 
fundamental  law  of  man,  the  obligation  to  manual  labor. 
Persuaded  that  redemption  cannot  be  found  but  by 
labor,  he  learned  to  write  in  order  to  disclose  what  he 
considered  the  truth  of  truths.  At  the  age  of  sixty-five 
years,  he  set  himself  to  composing  a  work  in  which,  in 
the  form  of  Bible  verses,  he  undertakes  to  show  that 
toil  on  the  land  is  the  toil,  par  excellence.  This  labor 
overcomes  all  the  difficulties  tnat  come  to  him  from 
his  ignorance  and  his  great  age.  Working  by  day  in 
the  field,  and  by  night  on  his  book,  he  accomplishes  ^t 
the  end  of  many  years  the  project  he  had  formed.  But 
the  manuscript  which  he  sends  to  the  czar,  under  the 
form  of  a  request,  is  rejected;  the  censorship  does  not 
even  authorize  its  printing. 

Under  these  circumstances,  about  1885,  Bondareff -was 
presented  to  To.-stoi,  whose  fame  was  already  great 
among  the  peasants.  Struck  by  the  profundity  and  the 
truth  of  the  peasant's  theories,  the  author  of  "My  Re- 


TOIL  vii 

/igion"  actually  introduced  into  his  life  the  reform  that 
Bondareff  preached ;  he  set  himself  to  following  the 
plow,  to  using  the  awl,  in  short  to  toiling  with  his 
hands.  Until  then  he  had  caught  a  glimpse  of,  rather 
than  professed,  these  reforms.*  The  truth,  which  he 
had  suspected,  did  not  appear  to  him  in  all  its  might 
until  Bondareff  had  communicated  to  him  his  manu- 
script. It  was  then  that  he  developed,  modifying  them 
and  giving  them  wider  scope  and  deeper  meaning,  the 
leading  views  of  Bondareff  in  his  splendid  work  "What  is 
My  Life"  (whose  true  title  is,  "What  Must  We  Do  Then") 
and  in  "What  to  Do, "  which  is  the  answer  to  the  former 
book  and  forms  with  it  only  one  single  work.f  But  in 
1888,  to  show  that  the  ideas  of  which  he  had  made 
himself  the  apostle  were  not  the  dreams  of  a  fanatic, 
the  imaginations  of  a  mind  paradoxical  and  blase  he 
published    in    the  J  "Russkoye    Bogatsvo"  *Bondareff's 

*  Read  in  "War  and  Peace"  the  reflections  of  Bezouchoff  and 
Levin;  consult,  also,  "Anna  Karenina"  and  "My  Confession." 

f  Tolstoi  was  familiar  with  Bondareff 's  work  before  writing  "What 
is  My  Life"  and  "What  to  Do."  Besides  the  many  points  of  contact 
easily  established  between  the  two  doctrines,  which  we  shall  point  out 
further  on,  here  is  a  passage  from  ' '  What  is  My  Life,  "  where  Tol- 
stoi clearly  alludes  to  Bondareff:  ' '  Money, "  says  Tolstoi,  "is  slavery 
still,  the  aim  and  the  results  are  the  same.  Its  aim  is  to  free  man 
from  the  '  primordial  law, '  as  a  popular  writer  calls  it,  or  the  ' '  nat- 
ural law  of  life,"  as  we  call  it.  This  law  prescribes  to  each  of  us  per- 
sonal toil  as  the  means  of  existence."  The  "popular  writer"  of  whom 
Tolstoi  speaks  is  none  other  than  Bondareff,  who,  as  we  will  see,  bases 
toil  on  the  primitive  or  primordial  law,  '  In  the  sweat  of  thy  brow 
shalt  thou  eat  thy  bread  " 

X  ' '  Russian  Wealth, "  a  magazine  under  the  direction  of  M.  Obolen- 
ski. 


viii  TOIL 

work  whose  publication  the  censorship  had  at  first  for- 
bidden. On  this  occasion  he  wrote  a  profound  essay  on 
Toil  and  Bondareff's  theory.  It  is  this  essay  that  we 
publish  to-day,  following  it  with  Bondareff's  work. 

The  chief  reason  why  we  present  a  translation  of  Toi7 
is  that  this  work  awakens  great  interest  not  only  in 
relation  to  the  history  of  Tolstoi's  thought,  but  in  rela- 
tion to  the  understanding  of  the  reform  that  it  preaches. 
In  short,  Bondareff's  book  gives  us  the  work,  simple 
but  profound,  of  an  illiterate  peasant  who  stamm'eringly 
spoke,  in  1881,  of  the  grand  reform,  of  which  Tolstoi 
later  made  himself  the  champion  and  the  herald. 

I 

Between  the  teaching  of  the  peasant  Bondareff  and 
that  of  the  nobleman,  Leo  Tolstoi,  the  resemblance  is 
great,  and  these  manifold  resemblances  point  very  pro- 
bably to  a  borrowing  direct.  Tolstoi,  we  have  said, 
knew  Bondareff ;  he  questioned  him  on  toil,  imagined 
to  be  the  social  remedy,  he  read  his  work;  he  even 
published  it  at  his  own  expense.  Bondareff  then  has 
been,  in  some  measure,  the  inspirer  of  Tolstoi's  social 
theories,  as  the  secretary  Soutaief  has  been  the  inspirer 
of  his  religious  theories.   § 

In  fact,  if  we  open  Tolstoi's  last  philosophical  work 
"What  to  Do,"  we  will  find  there  set  forth  Tolstoi's 
ideas  on  social  reform. 


§  On  the  relations  between  Tolstoi-ism  and  Soutaief-ism  read  the 
masterly  essay  in  the  "Revue  des  Deux-Mondes"  of  Sept.  15,  1888,  by 
M.  Anatole  Leroy. — Beaulien. 


TOIL  ix 

Every  man  ought,  by  the  labor  of  his  own  hands,  to 
support  himself  and  family;  every  woman  ought  to  bring 
forth  children  and  raise  them  herself.  To  man,  as  the 
Old  Testament  says,  God  has  given  the  law  of  manual 
labor,  to  woman  that  of  child-bearing.  To  violate  these 
laws  is  to  incur  the  penalty  of  death.  But  while,  for 
man,  disobedience  to  the  law  which  is  peculiarly  his 
would  be  followed  by  death  in  the  near  future,  for  wom- 
an the  penalty  does  not  come  till  later.  The  violation 
of  these  laws  would  lead  directly  to  the  annihilation  of 
mankind. 

Now,  for  a  long  time,  men  have  violated,  for  the  most 
part,  the  law  that  concerns  them.  For  a  long  time  cer- 
tain classes  have  oppressed  others,  and  the  violation  of 
the  law  has,  in  our  da3^s,  reached  madness  even.  Do  we 
not  see  Renan  and  others  dreaming  that  some  day  ma- 
chines will  do  all  the  work  while  men  will  be  nothing 
more  than  *'  bundles  of  nerves  of  enjoyment."  As  to 
the  violation  of  the  law  that  concerns  women,  that  is 
luckily  quite  rare.  Prostitution  and  abortion  are  the  two 
ways  of  infringing  it. 

In  substanc'=^,  while  men  transgress  their  law  women 
ordinarily  observe  theirs.  So  women,  according  to  Tol- 
stoi, are  stronger  than  men,  and  it  is  through  them  that 
men  can  dream  of  returning  to  the  fulfilment  of  the  prim- 
itive law.  Only  the  mother  who  will  regard  child-birth 
as  a  disagreeable  accident,  and  will  find  the  meaning  of 
life  in  the  pleasures  of  love,  luxury,  learning,  and  social 
relations,  only  she,  says  Tolstoi,  will  brmg  up  her  child- 
ren in  false  ideas  and    will  teach  them  to  rid   themselves 


X  TOIL 

of  toil  by  usurping  that  of  others.  The  true  mother  will 
teach  them  on  the  contrary  to  perform  the  toil  necessary 
to  life. 

These  ideas  may  be  compared  with  those  which  Bon- 
dareff  sets  forth  from  the  first  paragraphs  of  '*Toil  Ac- 
cording to  the  Bible."  Bondareff  interpreting  the  story 
of  Genesis  shows  us  that  Adam  was  punished  for  having 
eaten  forbidden  fruit,  that  is,  ''usurped  the  labor  of  an- 
other." He  was  condemned  to  seek  his  sustenance  by 
the  sweat  of  his  brow;  to  ''knead  his  bread,"  *  to 
use  Bondareff's  expression. 

It  is  by  manual  labor  and  especially  agricultural  labor, 
and  not  by  the  merits  of  Christ,  the  sacraments  or  any 
other  virtues,  that  Adam  was  able  to  save  himself  from 
hell.  His  descendants  inherited  not  only  original  sin, 
but  also  this  obligation  to  labor  for  their  redemption. 
The  penance  inflicted  on  Adam  by  Jehovah  is  not  at  all 
allegorical.  In  like  manner  the  penance  inflicted  on 
Eve:  "In  sorrow  shalt  thou  bring  forth  "  ought  to  be 
taken  in  its  proper  meaning.  So  then,  on  the  one  hand, 
man  ought  to  gain  by  the  labor  of  his  hands,  the  bread 
needed  for  his  subsistence  and  also  for  that  of  his  wife 
and  his  children;  on  the  other  hand,  woman  ought  to 
perform  the  duties  of  child-bearing.  Neither  one  can 
get  free  from  his  respective  obligations  either  by  means 
of  money  or  by  any  other  means  whatever. 

In  reality,  then,  it  is  from  "Toil  according  to  the  Old 
Testament "  that  Tolstoi  has  drawn  the  idea  which  he 

*  It  will  be  seen  how  this  way  of  interpreting  the  Bible  may  be 
justified. 


TOIL  xi 

has  for  the  first  time  fully  presented  in  ''What  is  My 
Life"  and  ''What  to  Do."  But  while  the  Jew,  Bondareff, 
assumes  that  the  law  of  toil  and  the  law  of  child-bearing 
are  the  effects  of  the  divine  curse,  Tolstoi  protests 
vehemently  against  such  a  conception.  It  is  really  what 
we  find  in  the  verses  of  Genesis  cited  by  Bondareff,  and 
on  which  he  bases  his  whole  theory.  The  God  of  the 
Old  Testament  says  to  Adam:  "In  the  sweat  of  thy 
brow  thou  shalt  eat  thy  bread"  and  to  Eve:  "In 
sorrow  shalt  thou  bring  forth."*  But  according  to 
Tolstoi  it  is  an  error  to  believe  that  labor  is  a  curse, 
and  it  is  this  error  which,  of  itself  has  led  men  to  free 
themselves  from  the  different  forms  of  manual  labor, 
that  is,  to  usurp  the  labor  of  others.  Tolstoi  unceas- 
ingly proclaims  labor  to  be,  not  the  sorrow  but  the  joy 
of  life.  Neither  is  child-bearing  a  curse.  It  is  not  only 
an  imperative  and  sacred  duty;  it  is  also  a  joy,  a  satis- 
faction to  the  whole  being. 

Tolstoi,  then,  comes  to  Bondareff's  conclusions  from 
a  different  starting  point.  For,  to  speak  truly,  Tolstoi 
opposes  the  Gospel  to  the  Old  Testament.  He  claims 
even  to  draw  from  the  Christian  precept  of  charity  and 
love  the  law  of  manual  labor — "because,  in  truth,"  as  he 
says  so  eloquently  mToil,  "the  man  who  professes  not  by 
words  but  by  deed  the  doctrine  of  the  truth  (that  is,  the 
true  doctrine,  par  excellence, )  and  of  love  cannot  deceive 
himself  as  to  the   end  toward  which  his  activity  should 

*  It  is  to  be  noticed  that  the  Talmud,  also  law,  teaches  that  every  man 
ought  to  have  a  trade,  and  the  Sanhedrim  declares  that  the  Mosaic 
religion  ordains  manual  labor. 


M]k» 


mm 


^^ 


tiiK 


-^  X  mimsrrsaij  -t 


It  :x  mSL  ant 


1 


xii  TOIL 

tend.  Never  can  the  man  for  whom  the  meaning  of  life 
service  of  others  deceive  himself  to  the  point  of  believ- 
ing he  serves  those  who  are  dying  of  hunger  and  of  cold 
by  compiling  codes  of  law,  casting  cannon,  working  on 
articles  of  luxury,  or  by  playing  the  violin  or  the  piano. 
Love  cannot  be  so  mad!" 

Out  of  harmony  here,  yet  Bondareff  and  Tolstoi  soon 
come  together  again,  and  proclaim  in  unison  that  physi- 
cal toil  is  not  only  the  duty  of  man,  but  is,  besides,  the 
supreme  moral  remedy,  the  most  efficacious  agent  of  our 
salvation.  Bondareff  has  shown  Tolstoi  how  field  labor 
(which  he  calls  so  expressively  "  bread  labor")  is  the 
primitive  toil,  to  which  all  men  ought  to  apply  them- 
selves and  by  which  all  men  ought  to  live.  Other  sec- 
ondary tasks  should  not  be  performed  till  one  has  stirred 
the  earth  for  at  least  forty  days.  In  short,  as  a  general 
rule,  man  ought  to  feed  himself,  clothe,  lodge  and  shel- 
ter himself,  through  his  own  efforts,  without  need  of 
others. 

Finally,  it  is  clear  to  Bondareff  as  well  as  to  Tolstoi 
that  not  only  physical  toil  does  not  prevent  mental  activi- 
ty, but  that  on  the  contrary  it  rather  increases  the  dignity 
and  the  power  of  the  mind.  Accordingly  Toil  shows  us 
that  what  Tolstoi  teaches  us,  the  peasant  Bondareff  put  in- 
to practice  before  him.  If  a  comparison  were  made  again 
between  ''What  to  Do"  and  ''Toil"  it  will  be  seen  that 
Tolstoi  sets  forth  almost  the  same  theories  as  Bondareff. 
Undoubtedly  the  romancer-philosopher  keeps  all  his 
originality,  but  it  is  still  true  that  he  found  the  first 
traces  of  his  teachings  in  the  peasant's  book.     And  is  it 


TOIL  xiii 

not  a  grand  sight,  that  of  this  gifted  writer,  the  famous 
author  of  ''War  and  Peace  "  seeking  in  the  izbs  (hut)  of 
a  peasant  the  word  of  Hfe,  the  magic  formula  which  will 
let  that  heavenly  Jerusalem  of  which  all  men  dream  rise 
here  below. 


II 


Toil  not  only  shows  us  how  Tolstoi's  ideas  upon  social 
reform  through  physical  toil  were  developed  under  the 
mfluence  of  Bondareff,  but  it  enables  us  the  better  to 
understand  how,  till  now,  no  one  formed  the  theory  of 
physical  toil  and  its  effects  on  the  solution  of  the  social 
problem. 

What  have  people  not  said  about  Tolstoi,  laborer  and 
cobbler?  A  man  of  letters  quite  recently  wrote:  ''Tol- 
stoi's countrymen  sometimes  are  lacking  in  respect  to- 
ward that  grand  old  man.  From  them  has  come  the 
story  of  Tolstoi  turned  cobbler.  We  saw  the  nobleman 
established  in  a  shop,  and  did  not  know  whether  we 
should  admire  or  pity  him.  Neither  pity  nor  admiration 
is  needed.  He  does  not  make  shoe-making  his  life  work; 
he  seeks  only  a  distraction — rest  to  the  brain  in  toil  of 
the  hands.  Others  use  weapons,  weights;  he  has  a 
horror  of  useless  efforts — he  prefers  to  make  shoes." 
.  That  is  an  utter  misunderstanding  of  the  spirit  of  Tol- 
stoi's and  Bondareff's  teachings.  ^Physical  toil  is,  in 
their  opinion,  the  first  attribute,  the  essential  character 
of  man,  the  true,  the  only  meaning  of  hfe,  or  rather  the 
means  to  find  life's  meaning.  Beyond  doubt,  one  must 
work   to  preserve   the  equilibrium   between   mind   and 


xiv  TOIL 

body,  but  that  is  not  the  leading  motive  that  leads  Tol- 
stoi to  take  the  plow  or  the  awl.  He  makes  little  ac- 
count of  the  arguments  that  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau  enu- 
merates in  favor  of  corporal  labor.  If  it  is  necessary  to 
work  with  the  hands  it  is  because  life  consists  in  the 
strife  against  nature  to  conquer  the  means  of  existence, 
and  physical  toil  is  the  very  law  of  life.  Man  finds  in 
the  accomplishment  of  this  duty  the  complete  satisfying 
of  his  needs,  corporal  as  well  as  spiritual.  To  feed  him- 
self, to  clothe  himself,  to  care  for  himself  and  his  own — 
these  are  the  corporal  needs  he  must  satisfy.  To  feed, 
to  clothe,  to  care  for  others — these  are  the  sum  of  his 
spiritual  needs.  Every  other  form  of  activity  is  legiti- 
mate only  if  it  conspires  to  satisfy  these  primordial  needs 
of  man,  for  in  this  lies  all  man's  life4 

Let  us  go  further.  Tolstoi  is  an  idealist.  Nature  is 
not  what  we  fancy  it.  The  true  nature  is  mind,  and  mind 
is  superior  to  this  or  that  individual.  To  recognize  that 
individuality  is  only  an  illusion,  and  that  we  are  the  arti- 
sans of  an  infinite  plan  that  infinitely  surpasses  us,  this 
is  life's  meaning.  To  set  ourselves  free,  to  strip  off  per- 
sonality, to  follow  the  path  of  renunciation  and  of  self- 
denial,  ought  to  be  our  law.  Now  the  act  in  which  this 
ideal  is  incarnate,  that  in  which  it  takes  a  body,  is  toil, 
the  task  of  the  centuries  which  binds  the  generations  to 
one  another  and  makes  of  the  universe  a  harmonious 
whole,  a  single  being  accomplishing  the  same  work.* 

The  results  of  this  theory  of  toil  are,  in  one  direction, 
belief  in  the  possibility  of  paradise  on  this  earth,  and  in 

*  See  Tolstoi's  book  "Life." 


TOIL  HLv 

another  direction,  contempt  for  industrial  toil,  condemna- 
tion of  commerce,  hatred  of  cities,  ' 'veritable  filthy  Baby- 
Ions."  *'*It  is  necessary,"  says  Tolstoi,  ''to  abandon  the 
city,  where  there  are  only  consumers  and  no  producers, 
and  renounce  all  the  habits  of  city  life,  which  far  from 
constituting  progress,  are  only  the  worst  forms  of  cor- 
ruption, "f  ' 

Further,  if  this  theory  of  manual  labor  is  adopted,  the 
problem  of  pauperism  will  be  easily  solved;  it  will  be 
enough  to  divide  the  poor  of  the  city  among  the  peas- 
ant's hous^.  "How  is  it  possible,"  Tolstoi  asks,  "to 
leave  the  village,  the  mz'r  where  are  fields,  forests,  wheat, 
cattle,  in  a  word,  all  the  wealth  of  earth  and  go  to  seek 
one's  living  in  places  where  are  only  stones  and  dust. "  * 

Live  by  the  toil  of  your  hands,  "work  for  bread,"  is 
what  both  Tolstoi  and  Bondareff  recommend  to  all  those 
who  seek  a  cure  for  the  social  sores,  to  all  those  in  whose 
hearts  dwells  the  love  of  humanity  and  the  sentiment  of 
justice. 

Tolstoi  adds  that  if  there  are  two,  three,  ten  men  who 
without  entering  into  conflict  with  any  one,  without 
disturbing  the  government,  without  revolutionary  vio- 
lence, decide  for  themselves  the  terrible  question  that 
divides  the  world,  the  result  will  be  that  other  men  will 
see  happiness  near  them,  within  their  reach;  that  the 
hitherto  irreconcilable  contradictions  between  con- 
science and  the  organization  of  society  will  be  settled 
of  themselves  by  physical  toil ;  that    "cruel   inequality" 

f  See  "What  is  my  Life  ?" 


xvi  TOIL 

will    disappear,    and    that   finally   heaven   will    descend 
upon  earth. 

So  then,  science,  statesmans)  ^,  political  economy, 
and,  in  a  word,  all  external  means  are  powerless  to  dis- 
sipate the  evil.  The  only  remedy  is  in  a  personal, 
moral  reform,  ^ased  on  cha  'ty  and  manual  toil.  Hu- 
manity will  transform  its  only  through  the  inner 
transformation  of  the  individual.  The  whole  social 
question  comes  to  a  question  of  morals.  Social  reform 
is  for  the  honest  man  only  a  reform  within.  Let  each 
one  of  us  try  to  avoid  sinning,  to  cultivate  fraternity 
and  Christian  charity,  and  soon  there  will  be  no  more 
need  of  policemen,  of  soldiers  or  of  judges.  Freedom 
from  law,  the  city  of  God,  the  republic  of  the  wise,  will 
speedily  be  realized  here  below.  Have  we  not  here  an 
original  and  powerful  attempt  to  reform  society  and  to 
save  the  human  race?  Is  the  reform  that  Tolstoi 
preaches  possible?  He  only  can  doubt  it  who  has  not 
comprehended  the  true  teachings  of  Christ  which  teach 
the  renunciation  of  personal  life  and  admit  no  other 
immortality  than  that  of  humanity. 

Ill 

We  have  tried  to  set  forth  briefly  the  teachings  of 
Tolstoi  and  of  Bondareff;  comparing  them,  we  have 
shown  their  scope  and  the  consequences  to  society;  it 
remains  only  to  say  a  few  words  about  Bondareff's  book 
in  particular. 

The  reading  of  Bondareff's  work  is  interesting  and 
suggestive.     In  this  peasant  is  found  profundity,    close 


TOIL  xvii 

joined  to  simplicity.  To  be  sure,  the  thought  is  not 
always  displayed  with  satisfactory  clearness,  a  fault  due 
in  part  to  the  vocabula-  y  and  Biblical  style  of  the  author. 
But  this  difficulty  is  easily  overcome  if  one  reads  with  a 
little  attention.  We  have  done  our  best  to  translate 
the  text  in  a  manner  as  ex^-r^.t  and  as  precise  as  possible, 
preserving  in  it  generally  mode  of  speaking  common 
to  the  peasants  of  Russia,  .±xcless  readers  of  the  Holy 
Scriptures. 

We  have  tried  to  explain  in  notes  all  that  can  offer 
any  serious  difficulty,  and  to  illuminate,  as  it  were,  the 
texts  of  Tolstoi  and  of  Bondareff  by  comparisons  and 
contrasts. 

I  ought  finally  to  thank  my  brother,  M.  Emile  Pag^s 
who  has  already  translated  one  work  of  Tolstoi,  ("What 
is  My  Life?")  It  was  he  who  having  gone  in  i888  to 
visit  the  great  Russian  author,  at  Moscow,  received 
from  his  hands  the  manuscript  of  Toil.  My  brother, 
too  busy  to  translate  this  work  himself,  entrusted  it  to 
us.  I  may  add  that  he  has  taken  the  trouble  to  exam- 
ine with  us  some  passages  whose  sense  did  not  appear 
quite  clear.  May  Leo  Tolstoi  and  the  peasant  Bon- 
dareff, recognize  their  work  through  the  medium  of  our 
translations ;  that  will  be  the  best  reward  of  our  efforts. 

Amedee  Pages. 


TOIL 

AND   BONDAREFF'S   THEORY 

1 

The  work  which  I  offer  to  the  public  to-day  is  by  Tim- 
othy Bondareff.  I  have  changed  nothing  from  the  shape 
in  which  the  author  gave  it.  The  only  difference  be- 
tween the  book  and  the  manuscript  is  the  spelling;  in 
the  place  of  Bondareff's  own  spelling,  I  have  adopted  the 
one  usually  used  in  books. 

Another  difference  consists  in  the  division  of  the  work 
into  two  parts:  the  Theme  and  the  Appendix.  Under  the 
title  of  appendix  I  have  put  all  that  appeared  to  be  a 
repitition  or  a  digression  from  the  main  subject. 

The  work  seems  to  me  very  remarkable  through  its 
strength,  its  clearness,  the  beauty  of  the  style,  the  sin- 
cerity of  the  convictions  which  one  feels  in  every  line, 
and  especially  for  the  importance,  the  truth  and  deepness 
that  lies  in  the  fundamental  idea. 

The  starting  point  of  the  work  is  this:  In  all  of  the 
circumstances  of  life  the  most  important  is  not  to  know 
what  is  good  and  necessary,  but  to  distinguish,  amongst 
the  good  and  necessary  things,  the  first  in  importance, 
the  second,  the  third,  etc.  That  is  of  vital  importance 
through  life,  it  must  therefore  be  so  in  religious  matters 
in  which  humanity  is  bound  down  to  precise  duties. 


22  TOIL 

Tatien  *  the  master  of  the  first  epoch  of  the  church, 
said  that  the  unhappiness  of  mankind  was  due,  not  so 
much  to  their  ignorance  of  the  real  God,  as  to  their  be- 
hef  in  false  gods  and  to  the  fact  that  they  look  upon  God 
as  he  is  not.  One  can  say  the  same  of  the  duties  of 
mankind.     The  unhappiness  and  the  crimes  of  men  are 

*  Tatien,  one  of  the  apologists  of  the  second  century,  who,  in  our 
days,  attracts  the  historian's  attention  more  by  the  originality  with 
which  he  assimilates  the  revealed  truths,  the  rough  eloquence  with 
which  he  attacks  the  pagan  corruption,  his  sudden  and  obscure  pas- 
sage from  orthodox  to  gnostic  heresy.  He  was  born  in  Syria,  as  he 
says  himself  in  his  Discourse  to  the  Grecians. 

After  having  uselessly  searched  the  popular  beliefs,  the  oriental 
mysteries  and  the  various  philosophical  schools  for  a  doctrine  that 
could  quiet  his  intellectual  doubt  and  satisfy  the  needs  of  his  con- 
science, he  found  it  in  the  lessons  of  the  Gospel,  and  developed  in  his 
first  and  most  celebrated  work,  the  Discourse  to  the  Grecians,  the 
causes  of  his  conversion.  That  apology,  which  he  probably  wrote  in 
Rome,  differs  from  all  of  the  others  that  were  written  at  the  same 
epoch  by  the  bitter  antagonism  between  the  pretended  pagan  wisdom 
and  the  Gospel,  antagonism  which  is  found  on  every  page.  On  one 
side,  light,  nothing  but  light;  on  the  other,  darkness;  here  mythology 
with  its  ridiculous  fables,  the  clumsiness  of  which  is  but  very  roughly 
covered  by  their  subtle  allegories,  art  entirely  devoted  to  sensual 
pleasure,  philosophy  with  its  chaos  of  contradictions;  there,  Chris- 
tianity with  its  simple  universality,  giving  its  adepts  a  pure  life  and 
the  courage  to  face  death. 

After  the  death  of  Justin  the  martyr,  Tatien  returned  to  Syria  and 
joined  one  of  the  numerous  sects  to  which  oriental  imagination  had 
given  birth. 

We  have  ascertained,  as  surely  as  one  can  in  such  a  domain  of  con- 
tradictions, that  Tatien  belonged  to  the  sect  of  the  Encratites,  al- 
though he  was  not  its  originator.  (E.  Stroehlin,  Encyclopedia  of  Re- 
ligious Sciences.) 

The  best  known  of  his  works  of  that  time,  "The  Diatessarion, " 
might  have  been  a  mixture  of  the  four  Gospels,  and  Eusebius  speaks 
of  it  without  having  seen  it  himself.  Tatien  wrote  "The  Diatessarion" 
Gospel  in  order  to  erase  from  the  canonical  texts  the  genealogies  and 
other  parts  that  trace  the  Savior's  descent  from  David  by  successive 
birth. 


TOIL  23 

not  due  so  much  to  the  fact  that  they  are  not  aware  of 
their  duties  as  to  the  fact  that  they  admit  false  ones,  con- 
sidering their  duty  what  is  not  so,  and  ignoring  entirely 
as  such  what  is  their  principle  duty. 

Bondareff  says  that  the  unhappiness  and  crimes  of  men 
are  due  to  the  fact  that  they  have  taken  too  many  friv- 
olous and  injudicious  precepts  for  sacred  duties,  and  that 
they  have  hidden  from  themselves  and  from  others  that 
duty  which  is  undoubtedly  the  first,  the  most  important 
of  all  duties;  that  which  is  found  in  the  first  chapter  of 
the  Gospel:  ''With  the  sweat  of  your  brow,  you  will 
knead  your  bread."  * 

For  those  who  believe  in  the  holiness  and  infallibility 
of  the  divine  word  expressed  in  the  Biole,  it  is  evident 
that  that  commandment  proves  clearly  enough  through 
itself  its  own  truth,  since  it  was  given  by  God  and  has 
never  been  contradicted. 

As  to  those  who  do  not  believe  in  the  Gospel,  if,  lay- 
ing aside  every  prejudice,  they  consider  this  precept  as 
a  simple  and  natural  expression  of  human  wisdom,  they 
will  see  how  true  it  is  when  they  examine  the  conditions 

*  It  is  thus  that  Tolstoi  and  Bondareff  interpret  the  verse  of  the 
Genesis,  in  order  to  present  more  clearly  the  idea  of  manuel  work. 
The  usual  translation  is:  "With  the  sweat  of  your  brow  you  will  eat 
your  bread."  The  following  is  the  same  text  translated  by  Reuss 
from  the  Hebraic:  "And  to  man  the  eternal  God  said:  Since  you  have 
listened  to  the  voice  of  yonr  wife,  and  have  eaten  of  the  fruit  which  I 
had  forbidden  you  to  eat,  let  the  soil  be  cursed  on  your  account;  it 

WILL  BE  WITH  TROUBLE  THAT  YOU  WILL  DRAW  FORTH  YOUR  FOOD  DUR- 
ING YOUR  LIFE.  IT  WILL  OFFER  YOU  BRIARS  AND  THORNS,  AND  WHEN 
-'OU  EAT  THE  PLANTS  OF  THE  FIELDS,  YOU  WILL  FEED   YOURSELF    WITH 

THE  SWEAT  OF  YOUR  BROW,  uutil  you  retum  to  dust;  for  it  is  from  that 
that  you  were  taken,  dust  you  are,  dust  you  will  become." 

This  shows  that  the  intrepretation  of  Tolstoi  and  Bondareff  is  not 
wrong.  They  are  right  in  their  belief  that  the  Genesis  teaches  that 
the  natural  condition  of  man  is  to  dig  the  earth. 


M  TOIL 

of  human  life;  and  that  is  exactly  what  Bondareff  has 
done  in  his  book. 

What  prevents  them  from  seeing  this  statement  in  its 
true  light,  is  the  fact  that  most  of  them  are  accustomed 
to  the  erroneous  explanations  which  theologians  have 
given  of  the  Gospel.  And  that  habit  is  so  strong  that, 
as  soon  as  you  remind  them  that  a  doctrine  is  connected 
with  the  Gospel,  they  look  at  it  with  disdain:  ''What 
do  we  care,"  they  say,  *'for  the  Gospel!  We  know  that 
one  can  find  in  it  the  justification  of  anything,  and  that 
it  is  all  a  lie." 

Nothing  could  be  more  unjust;  one  should  not  disdain 
the  Gospel  because  men  have  not  explained  it  right; 
and  the  man  who  says  the  truth  is  not  guilty  because 
that  truth  has  been  said  before  and  in  the  same  terms  by 
the  Gospel. 

If  we  admit  that  what  is  called  the  Gospel  is  not  the 
work  of  God,  but  that  of  man,  and  if,  besides,  what  is 
purely  and  simply  the  writing  of  man  is  looked  upon  as 
coming  from  God,  we  must  not  forget  that  there  is  some 
reason  for  that.     And  that  reason  is  very  easily  found. 

Superstitious  men  call  it  the  work  of  God  because  it  is 
more  deep  than  any  human  science,  and  that,  in  spite  of 
continual  refutations,  it  has  reached  us  without  losing 
its  reputation  of  divine  descent.  It  is  called  divine  and 
it  has  been  transmitted  to  us  because  it  gives  the  most 
perfect  rules  we  know  of  for  human  wisdom.  At  least 
that  is  the  case  in  the  greater  part  of  the  work  that  is 
the  Bible. 

Such  is,  in  truth,  in  its  literal  sense,  the  text  which 
Bondareff  has  chosen  and  on  which  he  comments;  such 
is  the  commandment  which  mankind  has  forgotten,  and 
the  meaning  of  which  is  annihilated  by  the  present  inter- 
pretation. 

People  generally  look  upon  that  judgment  of  God  and 


TOIL  25 

Adam's  life  in  the  Paradise  as  historical  and  real  events, 
whereas  the  story  should  be  considered  in  an  allegorical 
sense,  because  it  shows  the  contending  tendencies  which 
God  has  placed  in  human  nature. 

Man  fears  death  and  is  submitted  to  it.  A  man  igno- 
rant of  both  good  and  evil  seems  to  be  more  happy  than 
we  are,  and  yet  our  tendency  is  to  learn  everything. 
Man  is  fond  of  pleasure  and  of  satisfying  his  needs 
whenever  he  can  do  so  without  incurring  pain,  and  still 
it  is  in  pain  and  sorrow  that  he  finds  himself  and  all  of 
his  race. 

The  words:  ''Knead  your  bread  with  the  sweat  of 
your  forehead,"  is  important,  not  because,  as  it  is  said, 
God  spoke  the  words  himself  to  our  father,  Adam,  but 
because  it  is  true,  because  it  asserts  one  of  the  unavoid- 
able laws  of  human  life. 

The  law  of  gravitation  is  not  true  only  because  it  was 
given  by  Newton;  on  the  contrary,  I  only  know  Newton 
because  he  discovered  it,  and  I  am  grateful  to  him  for 
having  taught  me  the  eternal  law  that  explains  such  a 
countless  number  of  phenomena. 

It^s  the  same  with  the  law:  "With  the  sweat  of  your 
brow,  knead  your  bread."  It  is  a  law  that  explains 
also  an  entire  class  of  phenomena.  Having  once  known 
it  I  cannot  forget  it,  and  I  am  grateful  to  the  one  who 
unrolled  it  to  me. 

That  law,  it  seems,  is  very  simple  and  known  long 
since.  But  that  is  only  in  appearance  and,  to  be  con- 
vinced of  the  contrary,  one  has  only  to  cast  a  glance 
around  him.  Not  only  that  law  is  not  recognized,  but 
the  one  that  is  practised  is  diametrically  opposed  to  it. 

All  of  those  who  believe  in  God,  from  the  tzar  down 
to  the  beggar,  every  one,  I  say,  is  anxious,  not  to  obey 
that  law,  but  to  break  it. 

To  show  that  that  law  is  eternal  and  unchangeable,  to 


26  TOIL 

explain  how,  if  it  is  broken,  unhappiness  is  the  immediate 
result:  that  is  what  Bondareff  tried  to  do  in  the  work  I 
am  presenting. 

That  law,  Bondareff  calls  it  the  primitive  law,  the  first 
commandment,  he  places  before  all  others.  He  then 
proves  that  sin,  we  may  say  the  faults  and  treacheries, 
re  due  solely  to  its  neglect.  According  to  his  views 
die  principle  one  of  the  positive  duties  of  humanity,  the 
first  and  most  evident  duty  of  each  individual,  is  to  knead 
he  bread  with  his  own  hands;  he  means  by  that  that 
every  man  must  accomplish  the  long  and  irksome  work 
necessary  to  keep  him  from  starvmg  or  freezing  to  death, 
and  consequently  to  earn  by  his  own  manual  labor  his 
food,  his  clothes,  his  lodging  and  his  fire. 

Bondareff's  fundamental  idea  is  that  the  law,  man  must 
work  for  a  living,  recognized  up  to  this  day  as  being  nec- 
essary, must  be  considered  invariable  and  better  than  all 
others.  Even  more,  it  must  be  observed  as  a  religious 
law,  just  as  much  as  the  Sabbath  and  the  circumcision 
with  the  Hebrews,  the  fasting  and  the  sacraments  with 
Christians,  the  prayer  five  times  a  day,  and  other  Ma- 

homedan  customs. 
« 
Bondareff  asserts  also  that  if  men  recognize  in  that 

manual  labor  a  religious  duty,  no  other  occupation  could 
prevent  them  from  obeying  that  law,  as^nothing  can  pre- 
vent the  believers  from  observing  the  days  of  rest  pre- 
scribed by  religion. 

We  have  over  eighty  holidays  a  year,  while  the  work 
of  the  bread  only  requires,  according  to  Bondareff,  about 
forty  days. 

How  extraordinary  it  seems  at  first  that  so  simple  a 
way,  one  that  every  individual  can  understand  so  readi- 
ly, requiring  neither  skill  nor  science,  could  save  human- 
ity from  all  terrestrial  woes,  however  numerous  they  may 
be.     But  how  much  more  extraordinary  it  is  that,   hav- 


TOIL  27 

ing  within  our  reach  a  means  so  simple,  so  clear  and 
known  for  so  long,  we  should  ignore  it  and  seek  to  cure 
our  pain  by  the  means  of  subtle  and  false  theories! 

Think  it  over  and  you  will  see  that  it  is  just  as  if  a  > 
a  man,  instead  of  putting  a  new  bottom  on  his  broken 
barrel,  would  invent  an  infinity  of  other  means  of  keeping 
the  water  in  it.     Those  inventions  are  a  picture  of  the . 
efforts  we  make  to  cure  our  woes. 

And  where  does  all  of  the  evil  come  from,  all  of  the 
sorrows  of  men,  all  of  those  that  are  not  caused  by  mur- 
ders, the  gibbet,  the  prisons,  fights  and  all  the  other 
cruelties  of  which  they  are  guilty,  because  it  is  impossi- 
ble for  them  not  to  be  violent  ? 

All  of  the  sorrows  of  mankind,  except  the  direct  acts 
of  violence,  are  assignable  to  hunger  and  privations  of 
all  kinds,  to  discouragement  in  work;  they  are  due  to 
wealth,  to  laziness  and  all  of  the  vices  to  which  they 
give  birth.  If  man  wishes  to  improve,  must  he  not  try 
to  destroy  that  inequality  which  causes  some  to  suffer 
from  misery  and  want,  while  others  are  suffering  from 
wealth  and  its  seductions?  How  can  those  sorrows  be 
eliminated  if  not  by  sharing  the  work  that  satisfies  our 
needs,  and  by  shunning  wealth  and  laziness,  creators  of 
vice  and  temptations;  or,  in  other  words,  to  obey  the 
law  that  orders  every  man  to  work  at  his  own  bread,  as 
says  Bondareff,  to  earn  his  living  with  his  own  hands  ? 

We  are  so  perplexed  by  the  multitude  of  our  religious, 
social  and  domestic  laws;  we  have  invented  so  many 
commandments  by  giving  out,  as  says  Isaia,  rule  after 
rule — one  rule  for  this,  one  rule  for  that,  that  we  have 
entirely  lost  the  feeling  of  what  is  good  and  what  is  bad. 
One  says  mass,  another  recruits  the  army  or  collects  the 
military  taxes,  a  third  judges,  a  fourth  studies,  a  fifth 
heals,  a  sixth  teaches;  all  in  a  word,  thanks  to  such  pre- 
texts as  the  preceding,  avoid  the  work  of  the  bread,  cast 


28  TOIL 

it  off  onto  others  and  forget  that  there  are  people  who 
are  dying  of  fatigue  and  hunger.  But  before  giving  the 
people  priests,  soldiers,  judges,  doctors  and  teachers,  it 
would  be  best  to  look  whether  they  are  not  starving  to 
death.  Not  only  we  are  forgetting  that  we  have  a  host 
of  duties  to  fulfill,  but  also  that  there  is  a  first  duty  and 
a  last,  and  that  we  cannot  fulfill  the  last  without  having 
fulfilled  the  first,  just  as  one  cannot  harrow  the  ground 
before  having  plowed  it. 

It  is  the  accomplishment  of  the  duty  which  is  undoubt- 
edly the  first  of  all  which  Bondareff's  doctrine  advises. 

Bondareff  shows  that  the  accomplishment  of  that  duty 
will  not  be  injurious  to  any  of  our  other  occupations — 
that  it  offers  no  difficulty,  and  that  it  saves  man  from  pov- 
erty, need  and  temptation. 

The  accomplishment  of  that  duty  destroys  above  all 
the  odious  division  of  mankind  into  two  classes  which 
hate  each  other,  and  hide  their  mutual  hatred  under  false 
caresses. 

'  The  work  of  the  bread,  says  Bondareff,  will  make  men 
.equal  and  clip  the  wings  of  luxury  and  envy.    ' 

People  cannot  plow  the  earth  and  dig  wells  with  rich 
clothes  on  their  backs,  with  white  hands  and  living  on 
delicate  food.  ^^ 

It  is  by  giving  themselves  to  an  occupation  saintly 
and  good  for  every  one  that  men  will  become  united. 
The  work  of  the  bread,  says  Bondareff,  gives  intelli- 
gence to  those  who  have  lost  it,  to  those  who  have  not 
lived  the  life  that  man  should  live;  it  gives  joy  and 
happiness  to  those  who  accomplish  it,  for  it  is  an  inter- 
resting  and  joyful  occupation  which  God  or  nature  has 
reserved  for  men. 

The  work  of  the  bread,  as  says  again  Bondareff,  is  a 
remedy  that  saves  humanity.  If  men  would  recognize 
that  primitive  law  as   being  divine    and  unchangeable, 


TOIL  29 

if  every  one  recognized  the  work  of  the  bread  as  an  un- 
avoidable duty,  every  individual,  living  on  the  result  of 
his  own  work,  would  have  the  same  belief  in  God,  the 
same  affection  for  his  brothers ;  the  poverty  frc  m  which 
suffer  the  great  majority  would  disappear. 

We  are  so  accustomed  to  the  'modus  vivendi  that  ad- 
mits the  contrary,  that  is, that  wealth  and  the  means  of 
avoiding  the  work  of  the  bread  are  a  gift  of  God,  and 
the  highest  social  position  we  can  long  for ;  we  are,  I 
say,  so  accustomed  to  that  state  of  affairs  that  we  are 
not  willing  to  examine  it  carefully  and  recognize  that  it 
is  incomplete,  unjust  and  inconceivable. 

We  must  therefore  analyze  carefully  that  condition  of 
society  and  ask  ourselves  whether  or  not  it  is  just. 

Relating  to  that  subject  there  are  religious  theories 
and  political  theories  enough  to  satisfy  every  taste. 
Let  us  see  what  would  happen  if,  following  Bondareff's 
wishes,  the  clergy  tries  in  its  sermons  to  explain  the 
first  commandment,  and  if  all  mankind  recognized  the 
holy  and  primitive  law  relating  to  work,  what  would 
happen? 

•  Everybody  would  work  out  and  eat  the  bread  he  had 
made,  and  the  bread  which,  let  us  say  it  again,  is.  abso- 
lutely necessary,  will  be  neither  sold  nor  bought.  What 
will  be  the  result?  Simply  this:  no  one  will  starve  to 
death.  If  a  man  does  not  gain  enough  to  feed  himself 
and  his  family,  his  neighbor  will  help  him.  He  will 
help  him  because  he  could  make  no  other  use  of  things 
that  cannot  be  sold.  The  consequence  will  be  that  man 
will  have  no  more  temptations,  he  will  not  feel  the  need 
of  winning  through  deceit  or  violence  the  bread  which 
he  cannot  get  otherwise.  "^ 

And,  having  no  temptations,  he  will  have  no  more  use 
for  violence  and  deceit.  Such  means  will  no  longer  be 
necessary  as  they   are   to-day,    and,    if   he   does  have 


30  TOIL 

recourse  to  them,  it  will  be  because  he  loves  violence 
and  deceit,  not  because  he  needs  them  as  he  does  now. 

The  weak,  those  who  have  not  strength  enough  to 
earn  their  bread,  or  have  lost  it  in  one  way  or  another, 
will  no  longer  need  to  sell  themselves,  to  sell  their  work 
and  sometimes  also  their  soul  in  order  to  get  their  daily 
bread. 

People  will  no  longer  try,  as  they  do  now,  to  cast  off 
the  work  of  the  bread,  and  load  it  onto  some  one  else; 
people  will  no  longer  kill  the  weak  with  labor  and  take 
it  all  off  the  strong.  One  will  no  longer  notice  in  man- 
kind the  tendency  to  use  every  atom  of  intellectual 
strength  in  order  to  help,  not  the  workingman  in  his 
work,  but  the  lazy  man  in  his  laziness. 

In  sharing  the  work  of  the  bread  and  recognizing  in  it 
one  of  the  principle  occupations  of  mankind,  one  would 
do  the  same  as  a  man  who,  in  the  presence  of  a  carriage 
dragged  by  madmen  with  the  wheels  up,  would  upset  it 
to  its  right  position,  he  would  not  break  it,  and  it  would 
go  better  after  that. 

The  life  which  we  lead  in  hatred  and  disdain  for  the 
work  of  the  bread,  and  all  of  our  efforts  to  reform  that 
life  so  contrary  to  nature,  what  is  it  if  not  the  carriage 
which  we  are  dragging  with  the  wheels  uppermost  ?  And 
all  of  the  efforts  which  we  can  make  to  improve  our  con- 
duct will  remain  fruitless  as  long  as  we  do  not  turn  the 
carriage  over  and  put  it  on  its  wheels. 

Such  is  the  doctrine  of  Bondareff,  and  I  am  a  believer 
in  it. 

Here  is  another  way  by  which  I  explain  to  myself  Bon- 
dareff's  conception: 

The  time  has  been  when  men  were  eating  each  other. 
But  the  idea  of  the  equality  of  mankind  has  been  gradu- 
ally developed,  so  that  such  a  social  condition  seemed 
doomed  to  disappear,  and  cannibalism  disappeared. 


TOIL  31 

Then  there  came  a  time  when  some  seized  upon  the 
work  of  others,  after  having  made  them  slaves.  But, 
human  conscience  becoming  more  and  more  enlightened, 
that  social  state  could  not  last. 

But  that  tyranny,  having  done  away  with  its  rough 
shape,  hid  itself  under  the  veil  of  hypocrisy,  and  is  still 
subsisting  to-day.  Man  does  not  openly  take  the  work 
of  another.  Violence  has  now  taken  another  shape:  the 
rich,  thanks  to  the  needs  of  the  poor,  make  slaves  of 
them. 

But,  according  to  Bondareff,  the  time  is  coming  when 
the  equality  of  men  will  at  last  be  recognized,  individuals 
can  no  longer  draw  their  profit  from  the  need  of  others; 
they  can  no  more  take  advantage  of  their  hunger  and 
cold  to  make  slaves  of  them,  for  men,  having  admitted 
that  the  work  of  the  bread  is  a  law  necessarily  imposed 
on  one  and  all,  will  consider  it  as  their  strict  duty  not  to 
sell  the  bread  (meaning  the  objects  of  first  necessity)  and 
to  feed,  to  clothe  and  warm  each  other. 

I  look  at  Bondareff's  work  in  another  light  still, 
which  is  the  following : 

We  often  happen  to  hear  that  we  must  not  be  satis- 
fied with  negative  laws,  with  negative  commandments, 
meaning  by  that,  rules  which  tell  us  what  we  must  not 
do ;  we  need,  it  is  said,  positive  laws,  positive  com- 
mandments, rules  that  tell  us  exactly  what  we  must  do. 

It  is  said,  for  instance,  that  Jesus  Christ  gave  five 
negative  commandments :  * 

I.  Do  not  look  upon  others  as  stupid  and  foolish, 
and  do  not  be  angry  with  any  one;  f 

*  In  these  precepts  of  the  Gospel  we  find  all  of  Tolstoi's  beliefs. 
See  for  the  development  of  the  doctrine  and  the  explanation  of  the 
Sermon  On  The  Mount,  his  fine  work  called  "My  Religion." 

f  And  I  tell  you  that  whoever  gets  angry  with  his  brother  will  be 
punished  by  the  judgement;  that  he  who  says  to  his  brother,  Racca, 
will  be  punished  by  the  council;  and  that  he  who  says,  Madman,  will 
be  punished  by  the  gehenna  of  fire. 


32  TOIL 

II.  Do  not  consider  marriage  as  a  source  of  pleas- 
ure ;  let  the  husband  not  leave  his  wife  nor  the  wife  her 
husband ;  J 

III.  Do  not  take  an  oath ;  never  bind  yourself  by 
promises  towards  whomsoever  it  may  be ;  or  for  what- 
ever it  may  be ;  § 

IV.  Bear  all  violence  and  insult  and  offer  no  resist- 
ance to  the  wicked;  * 

v.  Do  not  look  upon  men  as  your  enemies.  Love 
your  enemies  like  your  brothers ;  f 

It  is  said  that  those  five  commandments  only  teach  us 
what  we  must  not  do,  and  that  they  contain  no  com- 
mandment prescribing  what  we  must  do. 


X  It  has  been  said,  '  'If  a  man  repudiates  his  wife,  let  him  give  her 
the  letter  of  divorce." 

"But  I  say  unto  you  that  whoever  repudiates  his  wife,  unless  it  be 
for  the  cause  of  adultery,  exposes  her  to  commit  adultery;  and  who- 
ever marries  the  woman  who  has  been  repudiated  commits  adultery." 

§  Again  you  have  heard  that  it  was  said  to  the  ancients,  '  'You  will 
not  perjure  yourself,  but  you  will  answer  to  the  Savior  for  whatever 
you  have  promised  with  oath. " 

"But  I  say  unto  you,  Do  not  swear  at  all;  neither  by  heaven,  for  it 
is  the  throne  of  God;  neither  by  the  earth,  for  it  is  his  footstool; 
nor  by  Jerusalem,  for  it  is  the  city  of  the  great  king" 

"Do  not  swear  either  by  your  head,  for  you  could  not  change  a  sin- 
gle hair  to  black  or  white. " 

*  You  have  heard  what  has  been  said,  '  'Eye  for  eye  and  tooth  for 
tooth." 

"But  I  tell  you  to  offer  no  resistance  to  the  man  who  injures  you; 
but  if  you  are  stricken  on  the  right  cheek  hold  out  also  the  other." 

f  You  have  heard  that  it  has  been  said,  "You  will  love  your  brother 
and  hate  your  enemy." 

'  'But  I  tell  you,  Love  your  enemies,  bless  those  who  curse  you,  re- 
turn the  good  to  those  who  hate  you,  and  pray  for  those  who  outrage 
and  persecute  you,  that  you  may  be  children  of  our  Father  who  is  in 
Heaven;  for  He  makes  His  sun  rise  over  the  wicked  and  over  the  good, 
and  He  pours  His  rain  down  on  the  just  and  the  unjust." 


TOIL  33 

It  may  In  truth  seem  strange  to  you  that  there  should 
not  be  in  the  doctrine  of  the  Christ  any  precise  com- 
mandments as  to  what  should  be  done.  But  he  alone 
can  be  surprised  by  it  who  does  not  believe  in  the  doc- 
trine of  the  Christ  in  which  can  be  found  not  only  those 
five  commandments,  but  the  doctrine  of  truth  (the  real 
and  only  doctrine). 

The  doctrine  of  the  truth,  taught  by  the  Christ,  is 
found  neither  in  laws  nor  in  commandments,  but  only 
in  the  direction  which  one  gives  to  life. 

The  doctrine  of  truth  teaches  that  life  and  righteous- 
ness do  not  consist  in  personal  happiness,  as  many  peo- 
ple think,  but  in  the  way  you  obey  God  and  help  your 
neighbor.  And  that  precept  is  not  a  prescription  that 
one  must  fill  in  order  to  obtain  a  reward;  nor  is  it  the 
mystical  expression  of  a  hidden  and  incomprehensible 
mystery;  it  is  the  revelation  of  the  law  of  life  which  was 
not  known  in  ancient  times,  the  demonstration  that  life 
cannot  be  good  unless  it  is  directed  in  its  true  channel. 

That  is  why  the  entire  positive  doctrine  of  Christ,  the 
doctrine  of  the  truth,  is  expressed  in  these  few  words: 
^'  Love  God  and  your  brothers  as  you  do  yourself." 

It  is  impossible  to  give  any  explanation  of  that  thesis: 
it  is  self-sufficient,  because  it  is  all. 

The  laws  and  the  commandments  of  Christ,  like  the 
Judaic  and  the  Buddhistic  laws  and  precepts,  only  show 
the  cases  where  the  temptations  of  the  world  turn  man 
away  from  the  real  channel  of  life. 

Thus,  there  may  be  many  laws  and  commandments, 
whereas  there  can  be  but  one  single  positive  doctrine  of 
life  which  teaches  us  what  we  must  do. 

The  life  of  any  man  must  consist  in  the  pursuit  of 
some  end.  Whether  he  wishes  it  or  not,  he  must  walk 
towards  it,  since  he  lives.  Christ  shows  man  the  road 
he  should  follow,  and,  at  the  same  time,  he  shows  them. 


34 


TOIL 


how  they  can  leave  the  right  road  to  take  the  wrong: 
and  these  last  indications  may  be  very  numerous.  They 
are  called  the  commandments.  Jesus  Christ  has  given 
five  of  those  commandments,  and  they  are  such  that,  up 
to  the  present  day,  no  one  has  been  able  to  add  to  them 
or  take  anything  from  them.  But  a  single  precept 
shows  us  the  right  road,  as  if  there  could  not  be  more 
than  one  commandment  to  teach  us  how  to  guide  our- 
selves. 

Thus  the  reasons  for  which  the  doctrine  of  Christ 
contains  negative  precepts  and  no  positive  precepts, 
only  seems  illegitimate  to  those  who  know  neither  the 
doctrine  of  the  truth,  nor  even  the  real  channel  of  life 
given  us  by  Christ,  and  also  to  those  who  do  not  be- 
lieve in  His  teaching.  As  to  those  who  believe  that 
the  road  given  us  by  Jesus  Christ  is  the  only  true  one, 
they  can  not  look  for  positive  commandments  in  His 
doctrine. 

The  various  positive  doctrines  that  result  from  that 
doctrine  of  the  real  channel  of  life  are  always  clear  and 
precise  for  those  who  believe  in  the  lessons  of  Christ. 
The  people  who  know  the  real  channel  of  life  resemble, 
to  use  the  expression  that  Christ  gave  us,  a  spring  of 
fresh  water,  a  spring  that  flows  out  of  the  soil. 

All  of  their  actions  result  naturally  one  from  the  other 
as  the  stream  spreads  in  spite  of  the  obstacles  it  meets 
with. 

The  man  who  believes  in  the  doctrine  of  Jesus  Christ 
can  not  ask  what  are  his  positive  duties  any  more  than 
the  spring  that  flows  out  of  the  soil  can  ask  what  it 
must  do.  .  It  gives  water  to  the  fields,  the  earth,  the 
grass,  the  trees,  the  birds,  the  animals  and  men. 

That  is  also  the  conduct  of  the  man  who  believes  in 
the  definition  of  life  given  by  Jesus  Christ ;  he  goes 
straight  to  his  end. 


TOIL  35 

The  man  who  believes  in  the  doctrine  of  Christ  will 
not  ask  what  he  must  do.  Love,  which  will  be  the  ele- 
ment of  his  life,  will  show  him  plainly  and  clearly  what 
road  he  must  follow,  an^  what  are  his  duties  for  the 
present  and  the  future. 

The  first  and  most  pressing  of  the  works  which  love 
must  accomplish  consists  in  feeding  him  who  is  hungry, 
in  giving  water  to  him  who  is  thirsty,  in  clothing  him  who 
is  naked,  in  helping  the  sick  and  the  prisoners.  Such  is 
the  advice  which  we  find  continually  in  the  doctrine  of 
Christ,  and  which  is  given  us  by  our  own  heart.  Even 
more — the  entire  doctrine  of  Christ,  the  wisdom,  the  con- 
science, the  feeling,  everything  tells  us  to  give  no  other 
proof  of  love  to  the  living  men  before  having  assured  the 
life  of  our  brothers,  and  sparing  them  the  pain  and  death 
which  overtake  them  in  their  unequal  contest  with  nature;'*' 
everything,  in  a  word,  tells  us  to  accomplish  what  is  the 
first  condition  of  human  life,  which  is  the  work  of  the 
bread,  the  most  important,  the  most  irksome  of  all  works, 
and  the  one  which  all  should  be  submitted  to. 

Just  as  the  spring  cannot  ask  where  it  will  send  its 
water,  if  it  should  water  the  grass  and  the  leaves  of  the 

*  That  idea  of  the  eternal  struggle  with  nature,  appearing  to  him 
as  the  principle  duty  of  mankind,  is  constantly  to  be  found  in  the  works 
of  Tolstoi  and  especially  in  "What  Should  Be  Done."  "The  first" 
says  he,  "the  most  unquestionable  duty  of  man,  is  to  share  in  the  strug- 
gle against  nature  for  one's  own  life  and  that  of  others."  And  again: 
'  'That  God  or  that  law  of  nature  that  created  the  world  and  man- 
kind acted  either  right  or  wrong.  But  the  situation  of  men  in  the 
world  since  we  know  them  is  such  that,  naked,  without  hair  on  their 
bodies,  without  a  hole  in  which  to  seek  refuge,  unable  to  find  food  in 
the  fields,  like  Robinson  on  his  island,  they  are  all  obliged  to  struggle 
constantly,  to  struggle  unremittingly  with  nature  in  order  to  cover 
their  bodies,  to  make  clothes,  to  surround  themselves  with  a  barrier, 
to  build  a  roof  over  their  heads,  to  prepare  their  food  in  order  to  ap- 
pease, two  or  thr-ee  times  a  day,  their  hunger,  that  of  their  children, 
too  weak  to  work,  and  that  of  the  old  and  feeble," 


36  TOIL 

trees,  or  flow  lower  down  and  moisten  the  roots  of  the 
plants  and  of  the  trees,  likewise  also  a  man  who  knows 
the  doctrine  of  the  truth  cannot  ask  what  he  must  do 
first  of  all,  whether  he  must  teach  men  or  protect  them 
against  the  enemy,  amuse  them  or  give  them  the  com- 
forts of  life,  or  else  help  those  who  are  dying  of  starva- 
tion. A  spring  does  not  spread  over  the  soil,  does  not 
fill  the  ponds  and  quench  the  thirst  of  animals  and  men 
before  quenching  that  of  the  earth:  likewise  the  man 
who  knows  the  doctrine  of  the  truth  cannot  think  of  sat- 
isfying the  less  imperious  needs  of  mankind  before  hav- 
ing satisfied  their  first  one,  before  having  helped  to  feed 
them,  and  having  shared  their  struggle  against  poverty. 
The  man  who  practices  the  doctrine  of  the  truth  and  of 
love  can  never  be  mistaken  as  to  the  use  he  should  make 
of  his  activity.  The  man  who  sees  that  his  duty  in  life 
is  to  help  others  will  never  be  mistaken  to  the  point  of 
thinking  that  he  helps  those  who  are  dying  of  hunger 
and  of  cold  by  making  laws,  by  casting  cannons,  by  mak- 
ing objects  of  luxury  or  playing  on  the  violin  or  the  piano. 

Love  can  not  be  stupid. 

Just  as  love  for  a  person  does  not  consist  in  reading  to 
her  novels  if  she  is  hungry,  or  in  giving  her  costly  ear- 
rings if  she  is  cold;  likewise  it  is  not  admissible  mat  love 
for  one's  fellow  beings  can  consist  in  amusing  tliose  who 
have  eaten,  and  abandon  to  neglect  and  poverty  those 
who  are  hungry  and  cold.  The  true  love,  that  which 
acts,  far  from  being  unintelligent,  gives  alone,  on  tlie  con- 
trary, the  real  sagacity  and  the  real  wisdom.  That  is 
why  the  man  who  really  does  love  will  not  make  a  mis- 
take; he  will  accomplish  immediately  the  first  action  de- 
manded by  love  for  mankind;  he  will  help  those  who  are 
hungry  and  cold,  those  who  are  in  pain.  But  to  help  the 
hungry  and  all  of  those  who  are  unhappy,  it  means  to  un- 
dertake a  personal  contest  with  nature.     He  who  wishes 


TOIL  37 

to  deceive  himself  and  deceive  the  others  can,  at  the  time 
of  danger,  in  the  struggle  of  humanity  against  poverty, 
refuse  to  help  them,  increase  their  unhappiness,  and  as- 
sert to  himself  as  well  as  to  those  who  are  dying  before 
him,  that  he  has  other  occupations  or  that  he  is  seeking 
for  some  way  of  saving  them. 

A  true  man,  a  man  for  whom  life  consists  in  doing 
good,  could  not  say  such  heartless  words;  and,  should 
he  make  an  answer  like  that,  his  conscience  would 
never  approve  of  the  lie ;  his  only  refuge  would  be  in 
the  wily  and  diabolical  theory  of  the  "Division  of 
Labor.  "* 

Amongst  all  of  the  doctrines  on  human  wisdom,  from 
that  of  Confucius  up  to  the  Koran  of  Mahomet,  the 
Gospel  is  the  only  one  in  which  he  will  find  that  idea 
strongly  expressed.  It  is  the  Gospel  that  will  convince 
him  of  the  necessity  of  helping  mankind,  not  with  the 
theory  of  the  division  of  labor,  but  in  the  most  simple 
way,  the  most  natural,  the  most  necessary.  It  is  the 
Gospel  that  will  show  him  the  necessity  of  helping  the 
sick,  the  prisoners  and  those  who  are  dying  of  cold  and 
hunger. 

But  one  can  not  help  the  sick  and  the  prisoners  with- 
out contributing  personal  and  immediate  work,  for  sick- 
ness, hunger  and  cold  do  not  wait  in  their  mortal  work. 

*  Tolstoi  has  discussed  the  theory  of  the  division  of  labor  and  shown 
its  disastrous  results  in  "What  Must  Be  Done." 

Of  course,  according  to  Tolstoi,  the  division  of  labor  M^ould  still  ex- 
ist in  the  human  society,  but  the  question  is  to  discover  how  it  can  be 
rendered  just.  It  has  engendered  admirable  progress,  but,  I  know 
not  by  what  unlucky  chance,  that  progress  has  not  improved,  it  has 
even  been  injurious  to  the  majority,  to  the  workingmen. 

How  then  can  we  make  the  distribution  of  work  more  equal  ? 

To  reserve  one's  life  for  a  manual  work,  identical  for  all,  that  is  the 
first  duty;  when  that  one  is  fulfilled  each  individual  can  choose  a 
speciality,  but  still  in  such  a  way  as  to  be  useful  to  others. 


38  TOIL 

The  man  who  practices  the  doctrine  of  the  truth  will  show 
in  his  life,  entirely  devoted  to  helping  others,  the  truth 
of  the  primitive  law,  formulated  in  the  first  book  of  the 
Genesis :  "By  the  sweat  of  your  brow,  knead  your 
bread."  It  is  the  primitive  law,  or  the  first  command- 
ment, as  Bondareff  calls  it ;  and  he  shows  us  that  it  is  a 
positive  law. 

The  law  is  such,  in  fact,  for  those  who  do  not  under- 
stand the  real  channel  of  life  as  shown  by  Jesus  Christ ; 
it  was  such  for  those  who  lived  before  Him,  and  it  will 
remain  such  for  those  who  do  not  believe  in  Him.  That 
law  seems  positive  to  them :  it  asks  that  each  one  of 
us,  accorfiing  to  the  will  of  God,  manifested  in  the 
Bible  and  in  our  intelligence,  should  feed  himself  .  with 
the  result  of  his  own  work.  It  will  keep  that  character 
as  long  as  the  channel  of  the  human  life,  expounded  by 
the  doctrine  of  the  truth,  will  not  be  known  to  man. 

But  when  the  men  will  be  familiar  with  the  road  they 
are  to  follow,  the  one  discovered  by  Jesus  Christ,  the 
law  which  consists  in  kneading  the  bread,  while  still 
remaining  as  true  as  ever,  will  become  a  part  of  the 
only  positive  doctrine  of  Christ,  (love  each  other),  and, 
from  then  on,  it  will  be  positive  no  longer,  but  neg- 
ative. 

When  men  will  understand  the  real  Christian  doc- 
trine, that  law  will  simply  show  them  what  temptations 
man  has  been  exposed  to,  it  will  tell  them  what  man 
mu  St  avoid  in  order  to  remain  in  the  channel  of  true  life. 

For  a  man  of  the  old  testament  who  will  not  recog- 
nize the  doctrine  of  the  truth,  the  law  reads  as  follows: 
*' Work  the  bread  with  your  own  hands." 

But  for  the  Christian  its  meaning  is  negative.  It  says 
to  him:  '^Do  not  think  that  one  helps  humanity  by 
taking  advantage  of  the  work  of  others,  and  not  earning 
your  bread  with  your  own  hands." 


TOIL  39 

It  draws  the  attention  of  the  Christian  to  one  of  the 
most  ancient,  one  of  the  most  criminal  temptations  that 
man  was  ever  submitted  to.  Against  that  old  tempta- 
tion, so  fatal  in  its  consequences,  and  which  it  is  so  hard 
to  look  upon  as  deceitful  and  contrary  to  human  nature, 
against  that  temptation,  I  say,  Bondareff's  book  is 
entirely  written.  His  advice  is  equally  telling  for  him 
who  believes  in  the  Old  Testament,  and  for  him  who 
believes  in  the  Gospel;  as  well  as  for  him  who  does  not 
believe  in  the  writings  of  a  man  and  obeys  his  own  rea- 
son, and,  lastly,  for  him  who  knows  the  doctrine  of  the 
truth 

Reader,  my  dear  brother,  whoever  you  may  he,  I  love 
you.  Far  from  wishing  to  sadden  you,  to  offend  you  or 
introduce  evil  into  your  life,  I  want  but  one  thing:  to 
help  you! 

I  could  and  I  wished  to  prove  by  a  long  development, 
the  truth  of  this  thesis,  answer  all  of  the  objections 
which  I  hear  made  against  it;  but  what  good  would 
length  or  talent  do  me,  what  good  would  it  do  me  to  be 
right,  I  cannot  convince  you  if  you  only  allow  your  mind 
to  struggle  with  me  and  let  your  heart  remain  cold. 

That  is  what  I  fear.  I  fear  that  if  I  discuss  with  you, 
I  will  offend  you  by  the  pride  and  coldness  of  my 
mind,  and  consequently  be  injurious  to  you.  Let  us 
not  reason  then.  I  have  but  one  request  to  make:  do 
not  discuss,  do  not  demonstrate,  but  question  your 
heart. 

Whoever  you  are,  whatever  your  qualities,  however 
good  you  may  be,  whatever  situation  you  may  occupy, 
can  you  quietly  drink  your  tea,  eat  your  dinner,  talk  of 
politics,  of  art,  of  medicine,  of  science,  of  teaching,  when 
you  see  or  hear  at  your  door  a  man  who  is  hungry  and 
cold,  who  is  exhausted  and  ill?  No,  but  you  will  say, 
they  are  not  always  there  at  my  door.     That    may  be, 


40  TOIL 

but  they  are  fifteen  miles  or  ten  rods  away  from  your 
house;  they  are  there  and  you  know  it.  Consequently 
you  cannot  live  peacefully  however  great  may  be 
your  joy,  it  is  poisoned  by  that  recollection.  To 
keep  from  seeing  those  unhappy  people  you  must 
bolt  your  door,  keep  them  away  by  your  coldness  or 
else  seek  refuge  in  some  retreat  where  you  will  not 
find  them.  But  they  are  everywhere!  And  if  there 
was  a  single  spot  from  where  you  could  not  see  them, 
could  you  escape  from  your  conscience?  What  can 
you  do  then? 

You  know,  and  Bondareff's  book  tells  you,^you  must 
go  down  to  the  bottom,  to  the  place  which  seems  to  you 
to  be  the  bottom,  but  which  is  the  top.  Unite  yourself 
with  the  men  who  feed  those  who  are  hungry  and  clothe 
those  who  are  cold.  Fear  nothing.  Far  from  being 
worse,  your  new  condition  will  be  better  than  the  previ- 
ous one.  Put  yourself  on  a  level  with  the  others;  under- 
ta"ke  with  your  weak  and  unskilled  hands,  the  work 
necessary  to  feed  those  who  are  hungry,  dress  those 
who  are  cold,  work  the  bread,  struggle  with  nature,  and, 
for  the  first  time,  you  will  feel  solid  ground  beneath 
your  feet;  you  will  grow  famihar  with  independence, 
liberty  and  strength;  you  will  no  longer  need  to  hide, 
and  you  will  enjoy  a  pure  delight  and  pleasures  which 
the  world  had  never  given  you  any  idea  of.  You  will 
have  delights  unknown  until  then.  For  the  first  time 
you  will  meet  simple  and  strong  men,  your  brothers, 
who,  in  spite  of  the  distance  that  separated  you  from 
them,  have  fed  you  until  to-day. 

To  your  great  satisfaction  you  will  find  in  them  vir- 
tues of  which  you  had  been  unaware ;  you  will  find  such 
modesty  and  such  kindness  with  you  that  you  will  feel 
unworthy  of  it.  Instead  of  the  hatred  and  the  disdain 
which  you  expected,  you  will   meet   caresses,    grateful- 


TOIL  41 

ness  and  respect,  because  having  lived  all  of  your  life 
through  them,  you  have  suddenly  remembered  their 
poverty,  and  wish,  with  your  weak  hands,  to  help  them. 
You  will  see  that  the  island  on  which  you  had  sought 
refuge  in  order  to  be  spared  by  the  sea,  was  nothing 
but  a  heap  of  mud  in  which  you  were  being  drowned, 
while  the  sea,  that  you  dreaded,  was  dry  land.  It  is 
there  that  in  the  future  you  will  walk  bravely,  quietly, 
happily. 

It  was  bound  to  be  thus  because,  turning  aside  from 
the  road  of  deceit  onto  which  you  had  been  drawn  in 
spite  of  yourself,  you  will  find  the  highway  of  truth. 
After  having  disobeyed  God's  will,  you  will  accomplish  it 
faithfully.    ■♦ 

Leo  Tolstoi. 
Moscow,  March,  1888, 


PART  II: 


Toil  according  to  the  Bible 


BY  THE 


PEASANT  BONDAREFF 


TOIL 


ACCORDING  TO  THE  BIBLE 

In  the  sweat  of  thy  face  shalt 
thou  knead  thy  bread ;  for  dust 
thou  art,  and  unto  dust  shalt  thou 
return — Genesis  hi:  19. 

Before-  speaking,  according  to  my  strength,  of  the 
question  of  toil  and  of  idleness,  I  must  tell  who  I  am. 
Am  I  not  like  those  who,  showing  people  the  road  they 
must  follow,  the  road  of  righteousness,  follow  themselves 
the  road  of  evil,  the  most  contrary  to  justice  and  com- 
mon right  ? 

Up  to  the  age  of  thirty-seven  I  worked  as  a  farmer  for 
a  pomestchik*  of  the  Don,  called  Tchernozouboff. 
Everyone  knows  how  the  men  of  my  class  are  laden  down 
with  work.  Later  on  the  pomestchik  enlisted  me  as  a 
soldier,  and  my  five  young  children  remained  under  the 
same  heavy,  intolerable  yoke, 

When  I  arrived  in  Siberia,  in  1857,  with  my  wife  and 
two  children,  the  clothes  we  wore  were  the  only  ones  we 
had,  and  they  had  been  given  us  by  the  state. 

*  Lord,  owner  of  an  estate. 


46  TOIL 

But  in  the  last  fourteen  years  I  have  earned  a  little 
house,  so  that  I  am  now  the  equal  of  the  comfortable 
peasant  who  has  always  lived  here. 

And  how  did  I  acquire  all  that  ?  Simply  by  cultivat- 
ing the  earth.  Here  is  the  amount  of  work  I  can  accom- 
plish. When  they  are  mowing  the  wheat,  where  two 
good  workmen  can  hardly  succeed  in  tying  the  sheaves 
behind  a  mower,  I  can  succeed  alone  in  spite  of  my  sixty- 
five  years,  and  the  work  is  as  well  done,  and  the  sheaves 
are  as  strongly  bound.  God  is  witness,  reader,  that  I 
am  telling  the  truth. 

One  can  see  that,  just  as  it  is  with  you  in  the  high 
world,  the  superior  rank  is  given  to  the  general,  in  our 
world  it  is  given  to  the  skilful  workmen. 

I  have  then  in  all  justice  the  right  to  sit,  like  the 
general,  on  the  same  chair.  What  am  I  saying?  The 
general  should  remain  standing  before  me. 

Why?  the  reader  will  ask  anxiously.  Because  the 
general  eats  the  bread  produced  by  my  work,  while  the 
contrary  is  not  true,  and  that  is  what  will  be  fully  ex- 
plained and  justified  further  along. 

You  know  now,  reader,  who  I  am. 

Have  I  not  the  right  to  speak  and  write  about  toil 
and  idleness?     I  have  that  right,  and  I  make  use  of  it. 

If,  among  the  developments  and  explanations  that 
follow,  you  should  find  some  that  are  useless,  or  per- 
haps evep  injurious,  please  consider  them  void.  They 
are  not  dictated  by  any  bad  intention ;  but,  on  account 
of  the  weakness  of  my  mind,  they  seemed  to  me,  erro- 
neously it  is  true,  to  be  interesting. 

You,  the  high  classes,  you  write  thousands  of  books. 
Are  they  less  untimely  and  injurious?  And  still  those 
books  are  adopted,  approved  of  and  published. 

But  we,  in  the  lower  class,  write  on  our  side,  the 
present  short  story  for  all  time  and  for  our  defence,  and 


TOIL  47 

you  will  probably  cast  it  aside,  as  I  have  been  told  by 
more  than  one,  on  account  of  my  lack  of  talent  and  elo- 
quence. That  would  be  a  great  insult  to  us  and  also  a 
great  insult  to  God ;  I  know  with  perfect  certitude,  that 
heaven  will  soon  come  to  our  defence  if  you  refuse  the 
bread,  I  mean  the  truth. 

Can  you  deny  the  truth,  can  you  live  without  eating? 
No !  Inside  of  an  hour  you  will  hold  out  your  hand 
toward  that  tree  of  life,  forbidden  to  you,  toward  the 
bread  produced  by  the  work  of  others,  and  you  will 
carry  it  away.  There  is  something  there  that  makes 
one  think.  ^ 

That  is  why  I  request  you,  reader,  to  have  pity  on 
yourself;  give  the  question  all  of  the  care  that  it  de- 
mands, and  then  you  will  be  right;  and  if  some  one  else 
refuses  to  consider  it,  you  will  not  be  responsible. 

Do  I  expect  any  reward  for  the  trouble  I  am  taking? 

That  may  be  why  I  work,  why  I  write?  No;  the  only 
return  I  expect  from  it  is  punishment;  the  rich  people 
have  warned  me. 

If,  they  said,  you  addressed  the  blame  to  the  lower 
classes,  then  you  might  be  rewarded;  but  you  are 
wounding  well  known  people,  and  will  be  punished  as 
surely  as  you  will  die. 

But  what  may  save  you,  perhaps,  is  that  this  work  will 
be  destroyed. 

One  must  have  an  aim,  I  answered.  For  the  truth 
which  is  proclaimed,  one  must  be  ready  not  only  to 
suffer,  but  even  to  die.  But  it  may  be  with  them  that 
lies  the  greatest  fault,  they  might  be  punished  severely; 
that  is  what  we  will  show  further  on. 

That  is  then  the  answer  I  made  to  the  idlers  who  were 
predicting  such  terrible  suffering  for  me.  Certainly  it 
would  be  in  my  interest  to  speak  allegorically,  but  I  do 


4R  TOIL 

not  do  it.  You  may  be  angry  if  you  wish;  I  will  follow 
the  straight  path. 

Several  rich  people,  having  read  my  writings,  were 
deeply  offended.  ''You  are  writing  that,"  they  said  to 
me,  ''  not  against  everybody,  but  against  me  alone." 

That  is  why,  in  the  name  of  the  God  of  truth,  I  beg 
you,  reader,  not  to  have  that  same  idea.  I  am  writing 
in  the  name  of  every  farmer  and  against  all  of  those, 
whoever  and  however  many  they  may  be,  who  do  not, 
by  the  work  of  their  hands,  produce  the  bread  which 
they  eat. 

My  whole  work  can  be  resumed  in  two  words: 

1.  Why,  according  to  the  first  commandment,  do  you 
not  reap  the  bread  which  you  eat,  and  do  you  eat  the 
bread  produced  by  the  work  of  others  ? 

2.  Why,  in  theological  and  other  books,  are  the 
farmer  and  the  work  of  raising  wheat  not  approved  of, 
and  even  held  in  the  greatest  contempt  ? 

It  should  be  enough  to  ask  those  questions.  But  as 
you  persist  in  denying  manual  labor  in  every  way,  I  am 
obliged  to  write  to  greater  length  on  the  subject. 

And  now,  reader,  I  request  that  you  do  not  eat  for 
two  days  before  judging  my  book. 

♦  Humanity  is  divided  into  two  groups:  one  is  noble 
and  honored,  the  other  is  humble  and  deprived.  The 
first  is  richly  clad,  owns  a  table  covered  with  delicious 
food,  and  sits  pompously  at  the  seat  of  honoir:  they  are 
the  rich;  but  the  second  group,  clothed  in  rags,  exhaust- 
ed by  the  use  of  dry  food  and  by  the  irksome  work, 
bearing  a  humble  and  humiliated  look,  remains  standing 
on  the  threshold:  they  are  the  poor  laborers. 

The  truth  of   my  words  is  confirmed  by  the  parable: 

''There  was  a  certain  rich  man,  which  was  clothed  in 
purple  and  fine  linen,  and  fared  sumptuously  every  day; 


TOIL 


49 


''And  there  was  a  certain  beggar  named  Lazarus,  which 
was  laid  at  his  gate,  full  of  sores,  and  desiring  to  be  fed 
with  the  crumbs  which  fell  from  the  rich  man's  table; 
moreover  the  dogs  came  and  licked  his  sores."  (Luke 
xv:  19,  20.) 

Well !  I  will  ask  my  companions,  the  laborers  who 
always  remain  on  the  threshhold :  Why  do  we  always 
remain  silent  before  them  like  the  quadrupeds?  Cer- 
tainly one  should  be  silent  before  a  more  deserving 
man,  on  the  condition  that  one  should  know  why,  where 
and  to  what  extent  to  be  silent,  but  one  should  not  be 
vilely  humble,  and  adore  him  as  an  idol. 

It  is  therefore  in  the  name  of  all  of  the  latter  that  I 
speak  to  all  of  the  former  and  say  :  Answer  the  ques- 
tions which  I  will  ask. 

1.  Adam,  for  having  disobeyed  God's  order,  "Do  not 
taste  of  the  fruit  of  the  forbidden  tree,"  not  only  lost 
his  own  happiness,  but  brought  the  same  punishment 
down  onto  all  of  his  descendants  until  the  end  of  cen- 
turies. That  shows  that  he  committed  the  greatest  act 
of  impiety,  but  we  must  not  think  that  his  crime  con- 
sisted in  eating,  so  to  say,  the  forbidden  fruit,  that  is 
the  apple. 

2.  Then  he  tried  to  hide  himself  amidst  the  bushes 
of  that  garden.  According  to  the  words  of  Scripture, 
"Adam  and  his  wife  hid  amongst  the   laurel   bushes. " 

But  who  was  he  hiding  from?  Men  did  not  exist 
yet.     From  God,  most  certainly. 

See  into  what  madness  evil  draws  man !  Can  one 
hide  from  God?  That  shows  that,  understanding  his 
fault,  he  expected  to  receive  the  punishment,  and  here 
is  the  unhoped  for  sentence  which  God  passed  on  him  : 
*  "For  having  disobeyed  the  order  I  gave  you,  this 
will  be  your  punishment :     You  will  knead   your   bread 

Toil-4 


50 


TOIL 


in  the  sweat  of  your  brow,  and  you  will   return   to   the 
earth  whence  you  came." 

3.  Should  not  Adam  have  wept  tears  of  grate- 
fulness towards  God  for  the  unspeakable  mercy  He 
showed  for  him?  What  was  that  punishment  compared 
to  what  he  expected? 

4.  Can  we  now  believe  that  Adam  worked  for  nine 
hundred  and  thirty  years,  that  he  ate  his  bread  in  the 
sweat  of  his  brow  and  that  he  lived  from  the  work  of  his 
hands  although  he  was  noble,  according  to  the  ideas  of 
his  time,  for  it  is  through  him  that  humanity  increased 
and  he  is  the  father  of  mankind? 

5.  Did  he  wish  for  authority  then  or  any  power?  No. 
For  although  he  listened  in  the  paradise  to  the  advice  of 
the  snake  that  said  to  him  and  to  his  wife:  *'  You  will  be 
like  Gods  if  you  know  the  good  and  the  evil,"  which 
means  that  you  will  live  like  pomestchiks  and  will  be  the 
most  intelligent  and  wise  in  the  world,  and,  in  spite  of 
that,  they  were  trying  to  hide  from  God. 

Following  the  serpent's  advice,  Adam  hoped  to  live  in 
this  world  without  working,  but  he  was  condemned,  on 
the  contrary,  to  seek  for  his  food  with  the  sweat  of  his 
brow,  and,  instead  of  attaining  a  supreme  rank,  he  lost 
the  dwelling  where  he  had  been  born,  and,  exiled  from 
it,  he  appeared  poor  and  naked  with  his  body  for  sole 
possession.  As  soon  as  the  serpent  became  for  him  a 
horrible  animal,  the  desire  for  evil  contributed  to  his  fall 
and  that  of  all  his  race. 

6.  You  see,  reader,  what  resulted  from  this  desire  for 
possession. 

And  what  must  we  think  of  the  man  who  desires 
wealth,  of  the  man  who  can  live  under  parasols,  with 
white  hands,  and,  during  his  whole  life  eat  the  bread 
that  others  have  worked  for?  The  solution  of  this  enig- 
ma is  beyond  the  reach  of  our  mind. 


TOIL  51 

I  know  that  you  have  already  a  multitude  of  objec- 
tions to  make,  but  do  not  criticise  my  ideas,  I  beg  of 
you,  before  reading  to  the  end. 

7.  Did  Adam  expect  for  a  single  minute,  thanks  to 
money  which  did  not  exist,  or  by  any  other  unlawful 
means,  to  give  that  work  into  other  hands,  and  to  re- 
main himself  under  the  parasol  waiting  for  a  share  of 
the  work  of  others,  like  a  beggar  or  a  hornet?  That  is 
what  is  done  to-day  by  many  who  think  it  would  be  a 
great  crime  to  take  a  whisp  of  straw  or  a  grain  of  wheat 
from  others,  and  who  see  nothing  wrong  in  taking  and 
eating  the  bread  made  by  other  people  which  is  served 
on  their  table. 

8.  But  if  our  father  Adam  received  for  his  crime  a 
punishment  to  which  he  submitted  willingly,  or  other- 
wise if  he  lived  from  the  work  of  his  hands  until  the  end 
of  his  days;  as  it  is  said:  ''you  will  return  to  the  earth 
whence  you  came,'*  we  see  that  he  is  now  innocent  and 
that  he  has  paid  the  price  of  the  crime  which  he  committed. 

9.  Scripture  says  again:  ''And  then  Adam  will  hold 
out  his  hand  and  eat  the  fruits  of  the  tree  of  life,  and  he 
will  live  forever."  Some  suppose  that  it  means  literally 
of  the  tree  on  which  the  Christ  was  crucified.  But  such 
a  supposition  is  not  justified.  Is  it  possible  to  admit 
that  it  is,  thanks  to  the  worthiness  of  others,  from  Christ, 
that  man,  who  is  not  deserving,  obtained  the  forgiveness 
of  his  sin?  That  is  evidently  invented  to  strengthen 
people  in  the  hope  that,  without  work,  lying  continually 
on  their  side,  they  can  receive  the  inheritance  of  eternal 
wealth. 

But  if  that  tree  has  any  connection  with  Adam's  expi- 
ation, that  is  with  the  work  of  the  bread,  then  it  is  a  very 
irksome  duty  that  is  imposed  on  us. 

Was  I  not  giving  a  more  just  interpretation  in  saying 
that  when  Adam  would  eat  the  bread  produced  by  the 


52  TOIL 

work  of  his  hands,  then  only  he  would  live  for  centuries 
of  centuries? 

Let  us  suppose,  for  instance,  that  no  one  should  hold 
out  the  hand  towards  that  tree  of  life,  meaning  the  work 
of  the  bread,  as  is  the  case  with  most  of  us ;  in  such  con- 
ditions would  it  be  possible  for  the  world  to  live  ? 
*  It  is  therefore  plainly  and  legitimately  evident  that  we, 
the  laborers,  we  are  near  the  tree  of  life,  but  that  all  of 
you  who  avoid  work,  you  are  near  the  tree  of  death. 
Have  I  spoken  right  ?  You  will  be  obliged  to  admit,  I 
believe,  that  my  conclusion  is  true. 

10.  Thus  it  is  evident  that  if  Adam  by  that  expiation 
had  purified  himself  of  his  crime  in  the  eyes  of  God,  that 
expiation  has,  during  his  whole  life  the  power  to  atone 
for  his  sins. 

As  man  is  doomed  to  sin  against  God  until  the  end  of 
his  life,  this  punishment  is  given  to  him:  ''You  will 
return  to  dust." 

Is  it  right? 

11.  And  you  of  the  higher  class,  only  a  limb  of  the 
same  tree,  why  is  it  that  during  your  whole  life  you  will 
not  consent  to  accomplish  that  expiation,  and  why  do 
you  eat  several  times  a  day?  Are  you  not  just  as  great 
a  sinner  as  the  laborers,  my  brothers? 

But  no,  you  are  above  us,  you  are  more  intelligent 
and  more  learned,  and  you  are  committing  the  greatest 
crime  of  all  towards  God  and  towards  the  world. 

You  will  say:  ''I  work  more  than  the  laborer;  and  it  is 
with  the  money  I  have  earned  that  I  buy  my  bread." 
We  will  speak  of  that  later. 

12.  It  is  seen  by  all  that  has  been  said,  how  useless 
it  is  to  endeavor  to  transfer  the  expiation  of  our  sins  on 
to  anyone  else,  for  God  knew  himself  what  treatment 
should  be  prescribed  for  our  illness,  for  our  sin,  and  he 
prescribed. 


TOIL 


53 


Is  it  true? 

13.  But  if  we,  the  descendants  of  Adam,  have  inher- 
ited his  sin,  and  at  the  same  time,  the  atonement  that 
was  attached  to  it,  and  if  we  are  really  guilty  of  it, 
more  so  perhaps  than  Adam,  for  Adam  did  not  know  all 
that  we  have  learned  since  then,  in  that  case  we  must 
neither  endeavor  to  avoid  the  punishment  which  God 
himself  inflicted  on,  Adam  as  well  as  on  us,  his  posterity, 
and  each  one  must  work  and  earn  his  bread  with  his 
own  hands,  whoever  he  may  be,  whether  rich  or  poor, 
whatever  his  worth  and  rank,  except  the  excusable  cases 
of  illness  or  impotent  old  age. 

14.  Of  course  if  one  does  not  examine  attentively 
manual  labor,  the  anxiousness  of  earning  one's  life  and 
one's  worthiness,  it  may  seem  too  little  to  atone  for  the 
multitude  of  our  sins  and  make  us  innocent  in  the  sight 
of  God.  For,  since  you  are  working  for  yourself,  what 
reward  can  you  expect? 

I  have  explained  in  the  preceding  paragraphs  and  will 
say  in  the  following  ones  what  that  reward  is. 

The  worthiness  of  that  work  does  not  seem  sufficient 
to  you ;  but  you  would  still  remain  unwilling  to  accom- 
plish it  if  an  angel  came  down  from  the  sky  to  tell  you 
how  worthy  it  is. 

15.  You  see  then  how  Adam  atoned  for  the  first  sin. 
But  others  assert  that  he  was  exiled  into  hell  for  five 
thousand  five  hundred  years,  and  that  he  suffered  there 
until  Christ  delivered  him. 

But  that  is  certainly  an  interpretation  contrary  to  the 
law.  And  why  do  people  assert  what  does  not  agree 
with  the  law?  It  is  simply  to  rid  themselves  "of  those 
abominable  occupations"  and  live  like  pomestchiks. 
But  if  it  is  right  to  think  that  Adam  owed  his  deliver- 
ance to  manual  work,  then  we  also  must  work  diligently. 
Is  it  right? 


54  TOIL 

1 6.  I  ask  why  God  did  not  prescribe  for  Adam's 
atonement  those  virtues  which  we  consider  the  most 
highly:  fasting,  prayer,  sacraments,  etc.,  but  He  pre- 
scribed to  him  that  work  in  which  the  learned  will  not 
see  or  recognize  any  virtue,  which  they  even  look  upon 
as  a  capital  sin.'-   Why  is  it  thus? 

17.  From  all  of  the  developments  which  precede  it 
results  that  Adam  belonged  to  our  class,  to  the  lower  and 
ignorant  class;  he  knew  not  how  to  write,  read  or  talk 
well.  God  prescribed  to  him  the  occupation  which  was 
suitable  to  his  mind.  And  he,  being  weak  of  mind,  con- 
sented. But  now  God  is  giving  the  same  orders  to  the 
learned  through  the  Scripture  and  through  the  voice  of 
conscience;  and  they  retort  with  thousands  of  objections 
to  which  God  himself  knows  no  longer  what  to  answer. 

18.  Until  now  we  have  only  considered  Adam's  atone- 
ment; we  must  now  speak  of  Eve's  expiation.  Was 
God  not  able  to  create  in  the  beginning  several  thousand 
people  ?  Why  did  he  only  create  two;  the  husband  and 
wife,  Adam  and  Eve  ?  Evidently  it  was  because,  in  hu- 
man life,  there  are  two  principal  duties,  two  duties  of  the 
same  importance:  the  first  is  to  give  birth  to  men;  the 
second,  |o  work  with  the  sweat  of  your  brow.  God  said 
to  Eve:  ''I  will  greatly  multiply  your  sorrow  and  your 
conception;  (what  a  terrible  sentence);  you  will  give 
birth  to  children  in  sorrov^" 

And  he  said  to  Adam:  *^You  will  knead  your  bread 
with  the  sweat  of  your  brow  and  you  will  return  to  the 
earth  whence  you  came. " 

19.  Now  I  ask  why,  in  woman's  atonement,  there  is 
no  hidden  meaning,  no  allegory,  and  everything  is  ac- 
complished literally  as  God  said  it.  The  woman  who 
lives  in  a  poor  hut  and  the  czarina  who  sits  on  a  throne 
and  wears  a  crown  on  her  head,  have  the  same  destiny: 
* '  Their  children  come  to  them  with  pain. "     No  difference 


TOIi.  55 

h 
between  them.     No;  and  it  is  so  true  that  they  both  re- 
main half  dead  and  sometimes  die  entirely. 
Is  it  true  ? 

20.  But  the  women  of  the  higher  class  might  say: 
*'  I  have  no  time  to  be  delivered  of  a  child,  I  have  press- 
ing state  business  to  attend  to;  whereas  by  childbirth  I 
would  cause  the  state  more  loss  than  profit.  And 
then  is  it  right  for  me  to  be  the  equal  of  the  lowest  peas- 
ant, of  the  moujitchka?  It  is  better  for  me  to  hire  some 
other  woman  who  will  give  birth  to  a  child  in  my  place, 
or  to  buy  a  child  that  is  already  born  and  which  I  will 
have  for  my  own  as  if  I  had  carried  it  in  my  bosom." 
Could  she  speak  thus  and  accomplish  what  she  says? 

21.  No,  that  cannot  be  done,  the  order  estabHshed 
by  God  cannot  be  changed. 

^^Scrape  together  all  of  the  wealth  of  the  world  and  give 
it  for  a  child.  It  will  not  be  your's.  It  did  not  belong  to 
you  an  hour  before;  it  will  not  belong  to  you  any  more 
afterwards.  To  whom  does  it  belong  then?  To  the 
mother  who  bore  it. 

*With  bread  it  is  just  as  with  the  child.  Man  can 
avoid  the  work  of  the  bread,  buy  with  money  a  pound  of 
bread;  but  that  bread  belongs  to  another  and  always 
will.  '  It  belongs  to  him  who  made  it  by  his  work.i^ 

For,  just  as  God  decided  that  woman  cannot  avoid 
childbirth  with  money  or  any  other  means,  likewise  also 
must  man,  by  the  work  of  his  hands,  procure  the  bread 
necessary  for  his  food,  for  that  of  his  wife  and  of  his  chil- 
dren. He  cannot  avoid  that  obligation,  neither  with 
money  or  any  other  means,  whatever  may  be  his  rank  or 
his  worth. 

22.  No  animals,  neither  the  birds  nor  the  reptiles, 
nothing  that  lives  in  the  air  or  on  the  earth,  can  avoid 
the  destiny  which  Go^  set  before  it;  but  you,  man,  the 
most  intelligent  and  the  most  learned  of  beings,  why  do 


56  TOIL 

you  alone  cast  it  off?  What  will  you  answer  to  that? 
Will  you  again  seek  refuge  in  your  lie:  ''I  work  more 
than  the  laborer,  and  I  buy  bread  with  the  money  which 
I  have  earned  by  my  work?"  Leave  that  answer  aside 
for  nothing  is  more  false.  For  everything  that  exists  in 
the  world  you  can  buy  it  with  money,  everything  except 
bread. 

23.  I  ask  it  once  more,  why  is  there  no  hidden  mean- 
ing in  the  atonement  inflicted  upon  woman;  why,  when 
it  is  a  question  of  woman,  is  everything  accomplished 
literally  as  God  said  it,  while  man's  expiation  is  entirely 
allegorical?  What  exx:uses,  what  lies,  what  pretexts  can 
you  give  that  will  not  be  as  many  defeats?  ''That  com- 
mandment," will  say  the  intelligent  and  learned  man, 
''does  not  necessarily  mean  that  one  must  work  in  the 
fields  with  a  scythe,  a  rake  or  a  flail.  I  eat  my  bread 
with  the  sweat  of  my  brow,  it  is  enough."  And  the  sim- 
ple, the  ignorant  man  like  myself  will  think  that  the  in- 
telligent man  is  right  and  perfect.  But,  for  the  third 
time,  I  ask  for  an  answer  to  this  question:  why  is  every- 
thing literal  in  the  atonement  of  the  woman,  while  there 
is  nothing  but  a  symbol  and  an  allegory  in  that  of  man? 
24.  God  said  again  to  woman,  according  to  Scripture: 
"I  increase,  I  will  increase  your  pain  and  your  wailings." 
It  is  plain,  there  is  no  hidden  meaning.  The  suffering 
of  a  mother  is  so  great  that  it  can  not  be  described,  and 
the  heart  alone  can  understand  it.  "Your  desires  will 
all  be  in  regard  to  your  husband  and  he  will  dominate 
over  you."  And  everything  happens  as  it  is  said  in  the 
Scripture.  Why  is  it  then  that  the  duty  of  the  laborer's 
wife  being  literal,  your's,  that  of  the  learned  class,  is 
allegorical? 

25.  How  I  regret  that  I  am  not  eloquent!  I  feel  all 
the  truth  and  strength  of  what  I  say,  and  not  being  elo- 
quent, I  can  not  express  what  I  feel,    and   my   thought 


TOIL  57 

grows  dim  and  weak.  But  one  hope  encourages  me,  it 
is  this,  that  if  gold  can  be  seen  in  the  midst  of  mud,  so 
can  bread  also,  for  it  is  better  known,  more  appropriate 
and  more  dear  than  gold. 

26.  God  said  to  woman:  ''You  will  not  work  to  earn 
your  food,  but  your  children  will  come  to  you  with  pain." 
Why  do  our  women  work?  Reader,  while  waiting  for 
you  to  find  the  answer,  I  will  answer  myself. 

You  who  eat  the  bread  of  our  work,  ycu  are  in  Russia 
about  thirty  millions;  but  if  our  women  did  not  work,  ac- 
cording to  the  commandment,  what  would  happen?  One 
thing  only:  everybody  would  die  of  hunger. 

That  shows  plainly  and  evidently  that  our  women 
work  for  you  and  fulfill  your  duties:  you  eat  the  result 
of  their  work.  I  can  not  be  sufficiently  surprised  that 
you  do  not  fear  the  justice  of  God.  But  I  was  forget- 
ting that  you  buy  your  bread  with  money. 

Do  you  think  that  that  excuses  you? 

27.  I  have  heard  that  certain  women  took  a  poison 
that  they  might  not  have  children,  or  that  they  killed 
them  after  having  given  birth  to  them.  I  ask  what 
punishment  those  women  deserve  for  having  broken 
and  disdained  the  commandment  of  God. 

Is  it  not  the  very  same  punishment  that  should  be 
inflicted  on  the  men  who  have  broken  and  disdained 
the  commandment  of  God?  What  does  it  mean,  ex- 
cept that  they  should  not  eat,  since  they  have  not 
worked?  But  no,  they  eat  several  times  a  day,  other- 
wise they  could  not  live. 

/  j^^.  ^^  But  the  woman  who  has  killed  the  fruit  of  her 
womb,  spends  her  whole  life  in  atonement;  from  the 
bottom  of  her  soul  she  sighs  and  prays  to  God  for  for- 
giveness ;  until  her  last  day  she  fasts  and  prays.  Thus, 
it  seems,  she  will  win  from  God  the  forgiveness  of  the 


SS  TOIL 

sin  she  committed,  of  the  violation  of  the  commandment 
that  concerned  her. )  j 

But  you,  reader,  do  you  repent,  you  who  have,  all 
your  life,  eaten  the  bread  made  by  others?  Are  you 
asking  God  and  man  to  forgive  you?  No;  but  on  the 
contrary,  you  are  not  even  thinking  of  it,  you  rely  sole- 
ly on  your  money,  you  live  a  merry  life  and  think  your- 
self equal  with  God. 

*2g.  Woman  being  weaker  than  man,  God  gave  her 
an  unavoidable  duty;  thus  we,  the  lower  classes,  being 
weaker  in  mind  than  you,  we  have  also  an  unavoid- 
able duty. 

But  you,  being  more  intelligent  and  learned  than  we, 
it  is  willfully  that  you  act  as  you  do :  if  you  wish 
it,  you  can  accomplish  this  work;  if  you  wish  it,  you 
do  not  do  it,  because  you  can  make  others  do  it  for  you. 

Since  you  know  how  to  avoid  the  work  of  the  bread, 
and  who  to  oblige  to  do  it,  then  you  can  be  judged  un- 
mercifully, for  you  do  not  sin  unwittingly.  Whereas  I, 
who,  during  my  whole  life,  have  eaten  my  own  bread 
and  fed  others  with  my  work,  I  may  not  have  shown 
much  intelligence,  but  I  have  deserved  the  smile  of 
God.  , 

30.  Why  is  it  that  the  real  meaning  of  that  com- 
mandment which  is  above  all  other  commandments,  is 
ignored  by  men? 

I  do  not  see  any  other  cause  than  the  following : 
*  If  laborers  were  giving  the  explanation  of  the  law, 
they  would  show  it  with  its  full  meaning  and  power, 
then  all  of  the  czars  and  all  of  the  kings  and  all  of  the 
princes  of  this  world  would  recognize  that  the  first  and 
most  holy  duty  is  to  work  with  one's  hands.  Then  the 
lower  class  could  breathe,  it  can  not  now,  and  each  one 
would  carry  on  his  heart  the  key  of  the  entire  law : 
"Never  desire  anything  that  belongs  to  your  brother.,, 


TOIL  59 

31.  Because  it  is  those  people  who  hardly  know 
where  and  how  the  wheat  grows,  because  they  have  ex- 
plained and  explain  the  law ;  how  is  it  that  they  have 
entirely  misunderstood  and  forgotten  it.     '1 

Because  before  that  commandment  all  of  the  religious 
customs  easily  executed  and  requiring  no  work,  would 
lose  their  strength  and  be  cast  aside; 

Lastly,  because  the  most  important  is  that  he  who 
teaches  and  explains  the  law,  should  show  everywhere 
the  example  and  put  his  own  hand  to  the  work,  while 
generally  his  hands  are  very  white  and  unable  to  do  any 
work  of  that  kind ; 

For  all  of  those  reasons  the  commandment  has  been 
abandoned,  half  extinct,  I  should  say  that  it  has  been 
buried  alive  and  will  never  resurrect  for  you  or  you  for 
it  until  the  end  of  the  centuries. 

32.  If  that  commandment,  the  first  one  that  God 
gave,  from  which  comes  every  virtue  and  which  gives 
birth  to  eternal  happiness,  both  terrestrial  and  heav- 
enly, if.  it  was  accepted  and  understood,  the  affection  for 
wheat  would  be  so  great  that  fathers  would  be  telling 
their  sons :  "When  I  am  about  to  die,  carry  me  to  the 
wheat  field  that  my  soul  may  there  part  from  my  body, 
and  bury  my  remains  in  that  very  field. " 

But  what  is  happening  now? 

Those  who  work  expect  no  reward  from  God;  those 
who  live  from  the  work  of  others  expect  no  punishment. 

33.  If  tnat  commandment,  I  repeat  it,  was  accepted 
and  understood,  what  help  would  not  be  given  to  the 
farmers  for  the  work  of  the  wheat ;  it  would  be  so  great 
that  one  acre  would  produce  more  than  five  do  now. 

But  how  can  we  make  you  accept  that  law?  If  we  do 
not  follow  the  commandment  you  have  the  right  to  ob- 
lige us  to,  but  if  you  do  not    follow  the  commandment, 


6o  TOIL 

or  rather,  the  one  who  gave  It,  like  the  prodigal  son 
leaving    his  father,    what    can  oblige  you  to  return? 

Before  you  we  are  but  naughts  without  units,  as  we 
have  been  called.* 

And  why  do  you  lower  us  to  such  a  degree?  Simply 
because  we  are  feeding  you. 

54.  God  could  certainly  have  found  another  way  of 
rendering  the  earth  fertile  and  making  it  produce  wheat, 
but  he  has  made  of  that  work  the  atonement  of  our  sins. 
In  other  words,  man  not  being  able  to  live  without  sin- 
ning and  without  working  for  his  food,  he  allowed  us  to 
atone  for  our  sins  by  that  work. 

But  you,  neglecting  such  a  precious  remedy,  and,  as 
we  have  said,  burying  it  in  a  tomb  that  none  of  the  in- 
habitants of  the  earth  might  find  it,  you  have  decided 
that  man  can  be  saved  by  the  sole  belief  in  God. 

Satan  also  believes  that  there  is  but  one  God  and  obeys 
him,  as  we  see  in  the  book  of  Job,  II,  1-3. 

You  class  the  work  of  the  bread  with  the  secondary 
virtues  and  even  that  you  do  not  always  dare  to  do;  of 
the  head  you  have  made  the  tail,  and  even  that  has  not 
satisfied  you. 

Therefore  you  will  be  severely  punished  by  God,  and 
He  will  be  unmerciful  to  you,  because  for  thousands  of 
years  you  have  hidden  that  commandment,  and  of  a  live 
being  you  have  made  a  corpse. 

Read  all  of  the  books  of  the  world  and  you  will  find  in 
none  that  the  work  of  the  bread  and  the  farmer  are  re- 
spected:   they  are  looked  upon   as  less  than  nothing. 

*  It  might  be  thought  that  we  are  inventing  and  that  no  one  calls 
us  thus.  But  it  is  an  epithet  we  have  heard  several  times  and  from 
different  people.     Here  is  how  we  can  answer: 

You  all,  you  are  I  (the  unit)  and  we  are  O,  but  as  we  are  bound  to 
you  the  two  terms  must  be  brought  together,  making  ten :  which  show 
that  we  are  nine  to  one. 


TOIL  6i 

People  do  not  think  that  it  is  to  the  farmer  that  they  go 
to  buy  their  bread  and  that  everything  depends  upon  his 
willingness.     Now  think  it  over. 

35.  All  of  the  crimes  that  are  committed  on  this 
earth,  such  as  robbery,  murder,  plundering,  etc.,  all  of 
that  results  from  the  fact  that  the  commandment  is  hid- 
den from  men. 

The  rich  use  every  way  to  avoid  that  odious  occupa- 
tion, and  the  poor  to  shake  it  off. 

But  explain  to  man  the  importance  and  the  virtue  of 
that  commandment,  all  crime  will  stop  immediately  and 
forever,  and  mankind  will  be  delivered  from  poverty  and 
suffering  because  each  man  will  do  his  best  to  fulfill  the 
commandment  of  God. 

Fifty  years  ago,  I  remember  it  well,  the  tax  in  money 
was  of  four  roubles  per  person,  the  custom-house  duties 
were  small,  and  the  treasury  was  satisfied. 

To-day  the  tax  in  money  is  of  thirty-five  roubles  per 
person,  and,  in  general,  they  have  increased  ten  times 
over  on  everything;  the  number  of  tax-payers  is  more 
than  double;  and  still  they  are  complaining  that  it  is  not 
enough,  that  the  taxes  are  not  high  enough.  That 
makes  one  suppose  that  in  fifty  years  more  you  will  in- 
crease the  tax  to  one  hundred  roubles  and  ruin  the  peo- 
ple. 

And  why?  because  everybody  wants  to  dress  stylishly, 
but  without  working.  Where  must  all  that  be  taken? 
Evidently  from  those  who  can  say  and  do  nothing  to 
protect  themselves.  In  every  way,  from  above  and  be- 
low, from  outside  and  inside,  you  outrage  us  intolerably. 
That  is  why  the  people  have  become  scheming  and  art- 
ful; they  love  to  deceive:  and  thus,  not  having  a  kopek 
coming  from  the  treasury  they  will  prove  that  they  have 
not  five  thousand,  but  ten  thousand,  and  they  will  get 
them.     Is  it  not  so? 


62  TOIL 

During  the  last  days  of  March,  1883,  I  heard  that  phys- 
ical punishment  was  re-established.  I  trembled  on  hear- 
ing the  news.  As  the  butcher  cuts  meat  with  a  dull 
hatchet,  thus  strikes  the  executioner.  It  is  a  thousand 
times  preferable  to  be  killed  than  to  endure  such  torture. 

And  then  I  resigned  myself  to  it  for  a  while,  wonder- 
ing by  what  deed  the  executioner  had  better  begin  his 
action.     By  none,  I  answered  myself. 

If  there  is  no  other  way — if  there  is  no  other  possibility 
of  obliging  men  to  do  right,  then  must  we  submitjto  see- 
ing the  blood  flow. 

But  there  is  a  way,  a  decisive  remedy  against  crimes. 
It  is  the  oldest  law  which  God  has  given  to  us.  It  is 
not  in  vain  that  God  gave  us  no  duty  to  accomplish  be- 
fore our  work,  and  that  he  orders  us  to  avoid  no  other 
vice  than  idleness. 

That  shows  that  work  includes  every  virtue,  while 
laziness  and  idleness,  on  the  contrary,  have  produced 
every  sin.  If,  therefore,  there  is  a  criminal  amongst  the 
farmers,  it  is  simply  because  he  does  not  observe  that 
law.  We  must  not  forget,  however,  that  other  work  is 
meritorious,  but  only  after  the  bread;  that  is,  after  we 
have  eaten  the  bread  earned  by  our  own  hands. 

You  have  allowed  the  executioners  to  whip  men,  but 
what  men  ?  We  are  evidently  the  only  ones.  The  exe- 
cutioner does  not  touch  the  rich  who  have  to  protect 
themselves:  ist,  friends,  2nd,  eloquence,  3rd,  cunning, 
and  4th,  money.     We  have  nothing  of  all  that. 

Of  course  nothing  will  prevent  the  rich  man  from  aton- 
ing for  his  crime  if  the  superior  authorities  hear  of  it. 
But  otherwise  the  matter  is  hushed  up  immediately. 
And  it  is  said  in  the  Deuteronomy  that  ''presents  dazzle 
the  eyes  of  judges.^' 

Among  all  of  the  requests  which  I  have  to  make,  this 
is  the  one  I  care  the  most  for;    Do  not  fleece  the  poor 


TOIL  63 

while  sparing  the  rich.  And  if  you  do  fleece,  begin  at 
least  with  the  head  and  not  with  the  tail.  I  could  not 
express  my  request  more  plainly,  but  remember  my  argu- 
ment against  your  habit  of  spilling  human  blood.  ■*  It  is 
not  the  law,  but  the  lack  of  laws  that  defends  him 
who  protects  you  against  crimes.  ,  The  executioner 
should  disappear,  his  name  even  should  be  forgotten  in 
the  universe. 

36.  But  then  what  will  say  the  lower  classes?  There 
is  so  and  so  who  can  live  on  the  work  of  others,  why 
should  not  I  also  live  in  the  same  way? 

I  also  will  kill,  rob  and  be  violent;  I  want  to  have  my 
turn  in  living  as  a  pomestchik,  with  my  pockets  full;  I 
want  to  order  and  obey  no  longer.  It  is  not  through 
honest  work  that  you  will  succeed  in  having  stone  houses. 
* 'Honest  work  will  not  make  you  rich,  but  round- 
shouldered;  if  you  do  not  sell  your  soul  to  the  devil  you 
will  not  grow  rich,  etc.,"  (Russian  proverbs). 

And  it  is  yourself  who  come  to  judge  him  and  exile 
him  to  Siberia,  when  you  are  the  only  cause  of  all  evil. 

37.  You  see,  reader,  how  much  harm  there  is  in  that 
evil,  the  aversion  to  the  work  of  the  bread.  You  see 
what  white  hands  do  and  what  good  dirty  hands  draw 
from  the  earth.  And  lastly  you  see  the  good  that  would 
result  from  the  revelation  of  the  commandment. 

Have  good  writers  given  themselves  a  great  deal  of 
trouble  to  explain  it  and  teach  it?  Perhaps  they  have, 
but  it  would  have  been  far  better  to  show  how  useful  it 
would  be  to  observe  it,  how  wicked  it  is  to  cast  it  aside; 
they  should  have  spread  it  in  books,  in  their  sermons 
and  in  religious  ceremonies,  exhorting  every  one  to 
accomplish  the  work  of  the  bread.  It  would  have  been 
a  thousand  times  better  than  to  establish  a  religion  on 
the  works  and  merits  of  Christ,  and  avoiding  the  work 
that  was  prescribed  for  them  by  God,  all  that  was  sim- 


64  TOIL 

pie  and  easy,  but  it  would  have  been  necessary  for  the 
writer  or  the  preacher  to  set  to  work  himself  and  give 
the  example;  but  how  can  you  oblige  people  to  work 
when  it  tires  them  already  to  carry  their  hand  to  their 
mouth? 

38.  If  I  were  a  man  who  had  avoided  work,  who  had 
never  seen  how  it  is  done,  and  if,  in  spite  of  that,  I  had 
begun  to  teach  such  ideas  as  these,  everybody  would 
have  had  the  right,  for  answer,  to  spit  in  my  face  and 
walk  away  in  disgust.  And  if  until  then  I  had  been 
looked  upon  as  a  reputable  man,  from  that  time  on 
I  would  have  been  rightly  despised. 

That  is  why,  up  to  the  present  day,  the  writers  have 
said  nothing;  that  is  why  they  say  and  will  say  nothing 
of  that  commandment  until  the  end  of  centuries. 

Adam  committed  a  crime;  God  punished  him  accord- 
ing to  the  extent  of  his  crime,  as  we  see  in  the  Holy 
Scripture;  he  is  then  equal  to  God.  Why  then  does 
tradition  wish  him  to  have  been  exiled  into  hell  for 
five  thousand  five  hundred  years? 

Does  the  New  Testament  allude  to  that  exile?  Whence 
comes  that  legend?  If  that  was  true,  by  imposing  on 
him  the  atonement  of  work  God  would  have  deceived 
Adam  by  a  promise  that  was  never  to  be  realized,  God 
would  have  lied.  For,  if  that  work  was  useless  to  Adam, 
if,  having  endured  fatigue  during  his  whole  life,  his  only 
reward  after  death  is  the  torture  of  hell,  all  will  exclaim: 
''Is  that  the  way  in  which  God  will  reward  our  work 
also?"  If  it  is  true,  what  must  be  done?  How  can  we 
live?     By  robbing  and  killing? 

That  is  why  you  are  inventing  laws,  that  you  need  an 
executioner,  that  you  brand  men  with  a  red-hot  iron, 
that  you  send  them  into  exile,  that  women  remain  wid- 
ows and  that  you  turn  the  orphans  you  have  made  into 
victims  of  vice  and  crime. 


TOIL  65 

But  whose  fault  is  it? 

It  evidently  incumbs  to  him  who  hid  and  who  is  hid- 
ing the  law  of  work. 

39.  If  there  were  a  man  in  the  world  capable  of  hav- 
ing over  you  the  power  you  have  over  us,  he  might  al- 
low you,  though  it  is  doubtful,  not  to  make  your  own 
bread.  But  you  are  envied  by  the  laborers,  and,  spread- 
ing out  the  idleness  of  your  life,  you  take  the  strength 
away  from  the  hands  that  try  to  accomplish  that  work. 
Far  from  helping  them,  the  sight  of  your  idleness  keeps 
them  from  progressing  in  their  work  and  even  induces 
them  to  commit  crimes.  You  can  not  be  thanked  for 
such  an  influence  as  that,  is  it  not  so? 

What  a  shame  that  there  is  not  such  a  man!  That  is 
why  you  hear  them  cry:  ^'God  is  in  heaven  and  the  czar 
is  far  away." 

40.  It  can  be  seen  from  what  precedes  and  from 
what  will  follow  that  the  man  who  eats  the  bread  of  his 
work  is  happy  in  this  life  and  will  be  blessed  in  the  fu- 
ture. 

But  the  contrary  always  happens  to  him  who  eats  the 
bread  of  others.  No  other  virtue  can  help  him,  because 
he  has  mutilated  the  law  of  God,  or,  in  other  words, 
because  he  disobeyed  the  principal  commandment  and 
the  obedience  to  the  others  can  bring  no  remedy. 

41.  Every  object,  every  product  which  is  on  earth  is 
bought  and  sold  at  it's  price,  neither  higher  nor  lower 
than  right,  and  to  each  merit  is  attributed  its  reward. 
All  remain  even  and  no  one  owes  anything  to  any  one 
else.  But  still  our  work,  meaning  our  bread,  is  taken 
from  us  for  nothing;  we  are  neither  paid  nor  rewarded. 
Why  is  our  work  not  paid  for?  you  will  ask,  reader. 
Must  I  repeat  the  same  thing  over  ten  times? 

42.  In  the  name  of  God,  I  beg  of  you,  tell  me  truly 
if  you  would  work  for  your  bread  during  thirty  days  at 


66  TOIL 

various  times  of  the  year.  Why  does  it  seem  impossible 
to  you?  Is  it  because  you  can  not,  or  because  you  will 
not?  Answer  me  truly:  can  you  not  do  it,  or  will  you 
not? 

43.  The  work  of  the  bread  is  a  sacred  duty  for  each 
one  of  us,  and  we  must  give  ourselves  no  excuse  in  order 
to  avoid  it.  The  more  learned  a  man  is,  the  more  neces- 
sary that  he  should  give  the  example  of  that  work,  never 
pretext  any  hindrance,  and  never  avoid  it. 

44.  Must  I  give  theological  proofs,  because  I  wish  to 
save  you?  No;  but  for  the  reason  that  theology  alone 
gives  me  arguments  in  favor  of  that  work. 

And,  in  the  second  place,  because  the  people  of  my 
class  believe  firmly  in  God,  in  the  future  life  and  in  the 
Holy  Scripture.  Hearing  these  words  they  will  repeat 
them,  and  like  people  dying  of  hunger  or  of  thirst,  they 
will  rush  towards  this  work  and  towards  all  other  kinds 
01  labor. 

45.  Then  the  dark  night  will  become  for  them  a 
dazzling  bright  day;  the  clouds  will  disappear,  leaving 
a  blue  sky;  the  cold  will  change  into  warmth,  and  im- 
potent old  age  into  strong  youth. 

That  is  why  I  take  from  the  Scripture  the  arguments 
I  can  find ;  but  it  is  not  to  you  that  I  am  speaking. 

But  who  will  read  them  these  articles?  for  you  have 
no  right  to  read  them.  Must  the  laborers  be  advised 
to  read  them  themselves?  It  is  impossible,  it  would 
be  a  great  fault. 

46.  According  to  the  proverb,  every  day  is  not  a  hol- 
iday; but  it  is  every  day  lent.  In  other  terms,  we 
must  always  teach  and  advise  others  to  be  pleasing  God 
and  useful  to  society.  But  our  turn  has  come  to  stop 
teaching  and  advising  others,  and  to  simply  ask  our- 
selves this  question :  Why  are  you  teaching  others 
when  you  can  not  teach  yourslves?     It  is   also   said   in 


TOIL  67 

the  same  thought :  "You  bind  up  heavy  bundles  and 
load  them  onto  the  shoulders  of  men,  but  you  yourself, 
you  do  not  want  to  lift  your  finger."  One  must  begin 
by  setting  the  example  of  virtue,  and  then  advise  others 
to  follow  it,  otherwise  the  scythe  in  cutting  the  grass  is 
broken  on  a  stone. 

47.  O  you  who  belong  to  the  high  classes  of  so- 
ciety, think  of  this  :  ^  If  all  of  the  farmers  of  the  differ- 
ent parts  of  the  world  avoided,  as  you  do,  the  work  of 
the  bread,  then  the  whole  universe  would  soon  die  of 
hunger.  Would  you  admit  that  we  should  give  for  our 
conduct  the  same  explanation  that  you  do  for  yours? 

We  never  go  to  bed,  you  will  say,  we  are  continually 
working.  We  do  not  eat  free  bread,  but  we  buy  it  with 
the  money  earned  by  our  work,  and  we  pay  the  farmer 
the  price  he  asks  for  it.  We  eat  our  own  bread  by  the 
sweat  of  our  brows. 

But  if  we  all  work  where  will  the  poor  get  their 
money?  We  give  them  money  and  they  give  us  bread. 
Therefore  the  hand  washes  the  hand  and  both  become 
white.  We  live  through  them  and  they  live  through 
us.  We  can  not  at  the  same  time  govern  others  and 
guide  them  and  work  with  our  hands. 

The  commandment  given  to  Adam  applies  not  only 
to  the  work  of  the  bread,  but  also  to  every  other  occu- 
pation. One  can  not  live  without  bread  but  one  can 
not  live  either  without  the  things  with  which  we  are 
busy.  When  God  created  the  world  He  wanted  some 
to  work  at  one  thing  and  others  at  another.  Man  only 
accumulates  money  in  order  to  be  rid  of  that  ungrateful 
work.  And  then  it  is  impossible  for  me  to  divide  my- 
self up  and  do  several  things  at  once. 

I  have  no  rest ;  night  and  day  I  am  busy  and  I 
hardly  have  time  to  eat  bread  already  prepared.  If  we 
all  worked  at  the  bread,  the  universe  would  suffer. 


6S  TOIL 

I  have  a  great  deal  of  money  and  I  make  a  great  deal 
without  working,  and  you  want  me  to  go  into  the  fields 
and  torture  myself  for  thirty  kopeks  a  day !  People 
would  think  I  am  a  fool.  I  prefer  to  work  with  my 
money   here  at  home. 

But  if  ever5^body  must  work,  let  them  begin  who  are 
a  hundred  times  more  rich  than  I !  etc. 

48.  Such  are  the  pretexts  and  objections  which  you 
oppose  to  the  law,  those  are  the  reasons  for  which  you, 
who  belong  to  the  upper  classes,  avoid  the  work  of  the 
bread.  If  all  of  the  men  of  my  class  began  to  abandon 
the  work  for  the  same  reasons  that  you  give,  woilld  you 
admit  them  as  a  justification,  coming  from  us? 

No;  but,  thanks  to  the  power  you   have,    you    would 
stifle  us  and  all  of  our  arguments. 
But  I  ask  why  you  recognize  your  excuses  as  legitimate? 

Assemble  a  group  of  the  men  who  think  of  nothing 
but  the  vanities  of  this  world,  and  ask  them  what  an- 
swer you  should  make  to  that  question. 

49.  Bread  can  not  be  bought  or  sold.  One  can  not, 
with  the  bread,  accumulate  wealth,  for  it's  price  is  be- 
yond the  limits  of  the  human  mind.  It  is  only  in  cer- 
tain cases,  and  very  legitimate  ones  then,  that  it  must 
be  given  free:  for  instance  to  the  hospitals,  to  the  orphan 
asylums,  to  prisoners,  to  countries  ruined  by  bad  crops, 
to  people  left  helpless  after  a  fire,  to  widows,  to  orphans, 
to  the  deformed,  to  the  aged  and  to  those  who  have  no 
home. 

50.  This  commandment  is  not  followed  by  the  world, 
as  we  have  seen  and  as  we  will  see  hereafter.  It  might 
have  been  placed  amongst  the  virtues  of  slight  impor- 
tance, and  brought  thus  at  the  tail  end;  but  even  that 
honor  was  not  given  to  it. 

Nature  itself  advises  the  farmer  to  cultivate  the  good 
of  all  goods,  the  bread. 


TOIL  69 

But  if  not  satisfied  with  seeing  what  is  the  greatest  of 
all  blessings,  he  could  penetrate  the  deep  mysteries  of 
nature,  then  would  be  realized  all  that  has  been  exposed 
in  the  preceding  article.  People  would  not  ask  of  each 
other:  ''Give  me  some  bread;"  but  they  would  say: 
''Take  part  of  my  bread;"  and  I  do  not  believe  that 
there  would  be  a  man  in  the  world  who  would  like  to 
eat  the  bread  reaped  and  prepared  by  others. 

But  what  can  be  done  now  ?  You  have  hidden  away 
that  commandment  as  a  stone  is  cast  into  the  sea,  so  that 
its  name  even  exists  no  longer  and  its  recollection  has 
vanished  from  the  surface  of  the  globe.  But  God  judges 
between  you  and  us. 

51.  Here  are  the  objections  made  to  us  by  a  wealty 
man:  "How  can  you  assert  that  it  is  forbidden  to  buy 
and  sell  bread,  to  traffic  with  it  and  make  a  fortune  with 
it  ?  Besides  what  the  historians  tell  us,  we  see  in  the 
Scripture  that  in  ancient  times  bread  was  bought  and 
sold,  and  that  it  was  not  a  sin  against  God.  You  say 
also  that  bread  cannot  be  exchanged  for  money  and  that 
we  must  absolutely  submit  to  manual  labor;  it  is  evi- 
dently absurd.  Abraham,  Isaac,  Jacob  and  other  an- 
cestors of  mankind  were  rich  and  had  both  male  and  fe- 
male slaves.  We  must  conclude  that  they  did  not  work 
themselves  but  that  they  ate  the  bread  made  by  others; 
and  still  they  are  not  guilty  in  the  eyes  of  God. 

52.  And  what  proves  still  better  how  false  your  asser- 
tions are,  is  that  the  two  great  legislators,  Moses  and 
Jesus  Christ,  have  not  spoken  of  that  commandment. 
When  Moses  wrote:  'Knead  your  bread  with  the  sweat 
of  your  brow,  '  he  meant  by  the  words  all  kinds  of  occu- 
pations. Such  must  be  the  meaning  of  those  words  if 
one  remembers  that  Moses  himself  lived  for  forty  years 
at  the  court  of  Egypt,  without  working.  During  the 
forty  years  that  followed  he  watched  the  sheep  of  Jethro, 


70  TOIL 

his  father-in-law,  in  the  country  of  Midian;  but  he  did 
not  work  the  bread.  During  forty  other  years  he  led  the 
Israelites  in  the  desert;  therefore  he  never  worked.  Still 
God  received  him,  loved  him  and  placed  him  a,bove  all 
of  the  other  prophets;  but,  according  to  you,  Moses  was 
a  parasite. 

53.  It  is  the  same  with  Jesus  Christ.  He  is  the  real 
God,  the  Creator  of  heaven  and  earth,  and  He  alone 
judged  Adam  in  the  Paradise;  but  instead  of  saying: 
* 'Knead  your  bread  with  the  sweat  of  your  brow,"  He 
says  in  the  Gospel:  'Look  at  the  birds  of  the  sky;  they 
neither  sow  nor  reap,  they  do  not  accumulate  wheat  in 
the  lofts;  but  God  feeds  them.' 

In  truth,  does  it  not  seem  from  those  words  that  the 
work  of  the  bread  gives  no  good  result,  and  has  no  real 
usefulness  in  this  life?  In  short,  it  is  the  most  useless 
work,  and  God  gave  it  to  the  idle. 

54.  Even  more,  name  a  single  farmer  whom  God  has 
admitted  to  heaven  for  this  work.  We  do  not  know 
whether  the  prophets  were  rich,  but,  we  are  not  sure 
either  that  they  were  poor.  But,  as  their  books  have 
been  approved  of,  we  should  conclude  that  they  were 
rich,  because  the  book  of  a  poor  man  is  never  approved 
of,  however  good  it  may  be. 

That  is  what  says  Sirach,  man  inspired  by  God,  when 
he  remarks:  'The  rich  man  has  said  an  absurdity,  and 
every  one  is  silent,  and  his  words  are  extolled  to  heaven. 
But  the  poor  man  has  spoken  reasonably,  and,  far  from 
approving  of  it,  they  ask  him  who  he  is.'  * 


*  If  the  rich  man  has  been  deceived,  several  assist  him;  if  he 
speaks  insolently  (if  he  unveils  what  is  sacred)  he  is  justified. 

But  if  the  poor  man  has  been  deceived,  he  is  even  blaimed;  if  he 
speaks  wisely  no  one  will  listen. 

When  the  rich  man  speaks,  every  one  is  silent  and  his  words  are 
extolled  unto  the  skies. 

When  the  poor  man  speaks  they  say:   "Who  is  that  one."     (They 


TOIL  71 

Yes,  Jesus  Christ  called  the  poor  'his  friends,'  but 
he  only  wanted  to  encourage  them,  for  fear  that  they 
would  become  desperate  in  their  grief.  What  proves  it 
is  that  he  always  went  into  the  houses  of  the  rich,  and 
never  into  those  of  the  poor." 

55.  My  adversary  continues  and  says:  "  When  Noah 
came  into  the  world,  his  father  Lamack  cried:  'This 
one  will  relieve  us  of  our  toil,  and  of  the  irksome  labor 
of  our  hands  on  the  earth  cursed  by  the  Eternal.' 

*  And  that  is  how  he  delivered  us  from  that  cursed  work; 
but  he  did  not  deliver  you,  the  laborers,  because  you  are 
cursed  whereas  we  are  not;  and  it  is  to  be  hoped  that 
God  will  not  be  unmerciful  to  you  because  our  class  has 
trampled  you  under  foot.  Is  that  a  sin  in  the  eyes  of 
God?     No,  for  God  admitted  that  it  might  be  thus. 

56.  It  is  again  said  in  the  Scripture: 

You  will  be  cursed  in  the  town  and  you  will  be  cursed 
in  the  fields; 

Your  basket  will  be  cursed  and  your  kneading-trough; 

The  fruit  of  your  body  will  be  cursed,  and  the  fruit  of 
the  earth,  the  calves  and  the  sheep  of  your  flock; 

You  will  be  cursed  when  you  come  and  cursed  when 
you  go. 

The  Eternal  will  send  down  on  you  his  curse,  fright 
and  ruin. 

The  adjective  cursed  means  unhappy.  I  ask,"  ex- 
claimed the  rich  man,  "to  whom  those  words  were  ap- 
plied: To  the  rich  man  or  to  the  poor?  It  is  certainly 
to  the  poor  laborer,"  said  he.  ''Do  you  see  now,  Bon- 
dareff,  how  many  anathemas  God  has  cast  upon  the  poor 
laborer,  on  his  goods,  on  the  fruit  even  of  his  body,  and 
on  all  of  his  future  generation?  " 


blame  him  for  his  poverty  and  oblige  him  to  be  silent)  and  if  he  slips 
they  push  him. — Ecclesiastics  xiii:  26.     Translated  by  Sacy. 


72  TOIL 

Such  are  the  laws  on  which  is  based  the  society  of  the 
weahhy. 

57.  ''Am  I  saying  the  truth?'*  he  asked.  ''  Yes,"  I 
answered. 

Should  I  have  contradicted  him?  No,  it  would  have 
been  useless;  could  arguments  shake  his  belief? 

I  simply  thought  to  myself:  you  are  lying,  sir!  You 
are  not  as  intelligent  as  you  think;  and  I  am  not  as 
stupid  as  you  think.  In  both  cases  you  are  greatly  mis- 
taken. 

There  are  many  well  known  people  who  will  not  de- 
spise my  poverty;  those  will  judge  righteously  between 
you  and  me. 

58.  **  You  see,"  said  the  rich  man,  -'if  a  man  of  your 
inferior  class  should  acquire  a  certain  instruction,  he 
would  find  how  and  by  what  occupation  he  could  dis- 
pense with  that  work.  So  that  if  you  had  all  studied, 
you  would  work  no  longer  and  you  would  imitate  us." 

'*But  what  would  we  eat  then?  "  I  asked. 

''We  would  all  live  assays  the  commandment  of 
Christ:  Look  at  the  birds  of  the  sky;  they  do  not 
sow  neither  do  they  reap ;  they  do  not  accumulate 
wheat  in  the  lofts  ;  but  God  feeds  them. "  That  is  what 
he  answered. 

All  of  those  arguments  are  entirely  in  opposition  to 
the  primitive  commandment,  as  well  as  to  the  natural 
law. 

I  asked  him  :  "Which  is  the  most  immovable  law? 
Is  it  the  theological  law  which  has  been  written  by  man 
on  paper,  or  is  it  the  natural  law  which  God  wrote 
Himself  in  our  soul?"  Certainly  neither  one  can  be  de- 
nied, but  I  prefer  the  second,  the  natural  law,  and  I 
hope  that  you  agree  with  me,  reader. 

59.  "Very  well,  Bondareff,  I  warn  you  that  if  you  pre- 
sent your  ideas  to   the   government,    and   if  you   place 


TOIL  73 

mine  by  the  side  of  them,  my  arguments  are  the  ones 
that  will  be  approved,  they  will  be  recognized  as  true 
and  praised,  while  yours  will  be  contradicted." 

60.  You  see  now,  reader,  how  unreasonably  loyal  I 
have  been. 

I  should  have  hidden  the  objections  that  contradict 
my  arguments ;  but  I  did  not  wish  to  alter  the  truth, 
first  because  I  have  told  my  age,  and  second  because 
it  is  not  admissible  that  one  should  speak  of  the  sacred 
duty  called  the  work  of  the  bread,  and  mar  it  by  hiding 
the  truth  and  disguising  it  under  ignoble  flattery. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  if  you  find  in  my  answer  any 
cutting  remark  which  seems  intolerable,  clench  your 
teeth  and  say  nothing ;  do  not  quarrel  with  me  I  beg  of 
you. 

You  have  been  so  accustomed  in  your  life  to  listening 
to  flatterers,  that  my  out-spoken  ways  may  seem  intol- 
erable ! 

61.  Let  us  return  now  to  our  question.  How  many 
thousands  of  measures  of  wheat  or  of  grain,  how 
many  roubles  are  taken  from  us  each  year  in  taxes  and 
assessments! 

Besides  that  income,  the  lords,  the  pomestchiks,  the 
corporation  of  merchants  and  all  of  the  wealthy  own  un- 
speakable millions.  But  money  is  not  given  free,  and 
it  must  be  earned  with  our  arms  of  flesh  and  bone  -ac- 
cording to  the  commandment  I  have  given,  and  not  with 
the  tongue  or  the  pen. 

62.  Your  ways  of  life  are  a  cruel  offense  for  us,  and  a 
shame  for  you.  I  know  that  you  are  a  hundred  times 
more  intelligent  and  learned  than  I,  and  that  is  why 
you  take  my  money  and  my  bread.  But,  since  you  are 
intelligent,  you  must  pity  me,  I  am  so  weak.  It  is  said: 
*'Love  your  brothers  like  yourself,"  and  I  am  your 
brother  and  you  are  mine. 


74  TOIL 

Why  are  we  poor  and  common?  Because  we  eat  the 
bread  of  our  work  and  feed  ourselves.  Have  we  time  to 
study  and  become  learned?  Bread,  like  intelligence,  you 
have  taken  it  all  by  skill  or  by  violence:  you  have  sin- 
fully taken  everything. 

That  is  so,  reader,  whether  you  wish  it  or  not.  It  is 
not  my  fault  if  the  truth  is  so  bitter. 

63.  The  firenzy  of  need  impels  you  to  pray  to  God  for 
the  healthiness  of  the  air  and  the  abundance  of  terres- 
trial fruits:  it  is  well.  But  to  what  hands  do  you  owe 
that  abundance?  Who  must  plow  the  earth?  Is  it  you  or 
some  one  else? 

''But  it  is  impossible  that  it  should  be  I,  who  have 
white  hands,  you  will  answer."  ''It  is  to  you,  laborers, 
that  the  work  belongs  by  right. "  I  would  rather  starve 
to  death  than  to  pick  up  a  straw  or  a  grain  of  wheat!'* 

64.  You  should,  before  your  meal,  ask  for  a  benedic- 
tion, not  from  God,  but  from  us,  the  laborers,  and,  after 
the  meal,  thank,  not  God,  but  us. 

If  God  sent  you  manna  from  heaven  as  he  did  to  the 
Israelites  in  the  desert,  you  should  then  thank  him,  but 
since  it  is  from  our  hands  that  you  receive  the  manna, 
you  should  thank  us,  because  we  feed  you  as  we  would 
feed  little  children  or  invalids. 

65.  When  I  had  written  all  of  the  preceding  articles, 
several  laborers  said  to  me:  "What  you  are  doing  is  use- 
less. Do  you  think  that  you  can  make  the  wealthy  come 
and  work  the  bread?  If  the  prophets  and  the  masters 
of  wisdom  were  all  behind  you,  they  would  not  listen. 
Let  God  himself  cry  in  their  ears  with  the  judgment 
trumpet:  'You  are  going  to  die  and  you  will  appear  be- 
fore Me  to  be  judged,  and  your  disobedience  to  My  com- 
mandment will  draw  upon  you  a  relentless  sentence/ 
even  then  the  wealthy  man  will  remain  immovable  be- 


TOIL 


75 


cause  he  will  prefer  wealth  to  all  things  divine.  And 
the  work  of  the  bread  is  in  his  eyes  more  horrible  than 
torture.  But  you,  who  are  you?  You  are  only  the  dust 
under  the  rich  man's  feet  and  you  wish,  by  expressing 
your  convictions,  to  oblige  them  to  work?" 

66.  *'I  know,"  I  answered,  ''that  it  is  impossible." 
But  they  may  possibly  approve  of   our   arguments, 

since  they  are  taken  from  the  principal  divine  laws;  and 
they  may  spread  them  amongst  all  of  the  laborers.  For 
that  single  action  God  will  grant  them  a  great  reward. 
Soon  we  would  see  men,  like  people  exhausted  with 
hunger  and  thirst,  hasten  to  execute  this  work.  It  will 
only  be  later  that  they  will  take  up  other  occupations, 
because  they  all  result  from  the  work  of  the  bread.  Then 
the  darkest  night  will  become  for  them  a  dazzling  day, 
and  everything  will  seem  easy  to  them.  That  is  why, 
in  the  midst  of  the  cares  and  troubles  of  life,  I  undertook 
this  work. 

67.  And  besides  that,  the  upper  classes  will  see  that 
we  are  deserving  (they  never  noticed  it  or  heard  of  it). 
They  will  feel  guilty  both  before  God  and  before  man; 
they  will  no  longer  count  as  much  on  us;  they  will  not 
crush  us  as  they  are  doing  now.  (They  buy  from  us  at 
half  price  and  sell  us  for  twice  what  the  goods  are  worth. 
That  is  what  happens  far  from  towns  and  commercial 
centers,  in  the  poor  countries  where  there  is  a  rich  man; 
there  is  no  one  else  there  to  sell  to  or  buy  from.)  At 
each  mouthfull  of  bread  they  will  think,  in  spite  of  them- 
selves, what  are  the  hands  that  made  the  bread  that  we 
are  eating  ?  And  the  conscience!  Money  cannot  pro- 
tect them  against  that;  it  will  oblige  them  to  improve  in 
spite  of  themselves.  That  is  the  reason  that  made  me 
undertake  the  work. 

68.  And  even  if  that  commandment  only  makes  a 
slight  impression  on  your  mind,    O    you,    people  of  the 


76  TOIL 

learned  class,  you  would  still  make  a  great  effort  to  eat 
only  the  bread  of  your  own  work,  for  you  would  reason 
thus:  Amongst  the  poor  people,  amongst  the  laborers,  not 
only  the  strong  suffer  in  reaping  the  wheat,  but  even 
the  women  on  the  point  of  being  delivered  are  obliged  to 
work  also.  It  is  thus  that  the  child,  while  yet  in  its 
mother's  womb  suffers  already  for  the  bread  which  it  has 
not  tasted.  The  little  babies,  in  their  cradle,  suffer  from 
the  wind  and  the  insects,  and  all  their  body  is  burned  by 
the  sun.  The  children  of  seven  years  work  also  accord- 
ing to  their  strength;  the  old  men  of  seventy  who  can 
not  stoop  down  are  obliged  to  get  onto  their  knees  to 
reap.  It  is  thus  at  times,  even  now,  but  before,  during 
the  days  of  slavery  it  was  a  great  deal  worse.  All  of 
those  families  draw  their  life  from  the  earth  and  die  with 
it,  according  to  the  precept:  "You  are  dust  and  you  will 
return  to  the  dust."  In  a  word,  parasites  are  unknown 
to  them.     Think  that  over  a  little,  learned  men. 

69  But  with  us,  you  will  say  then,  a  man  of  thirty, 
enjoying  excellent  health,  remains  constantly,  even  in 
summer  whistling  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets,  waiting 
for  the  poor  martyrs  to  put  the  bread  between  his  teeth. 

With  us,  with  the  laborers,  on  the  contrary,  not  only 
in  summer,  but  even  in  midwinter,  our  shirts  are  often 
soaked  with  sweat. 

Throughout  Christianity  the  first  and  most  important 
of  the  sacraments  is  baptism.  But,  tell  me,  which 
washes  off  sin  the  most  effectively?  Is  it  the  water  of 
baptism,  or  the  sweat  that  flows  from  our  brow  during 
our  entire    life  devoted  to  the  work  of  the  bread? 

Here  is  a  proverb  which  you  often  hear  quoted:  "  The 
frock  of  the  moujik  is  grey,  but  the  devil  has  not  eaten 
his  reason."  The  proverb  is  not  correct,  for  I  am  cer- 
tain that  I  will  never  have  an  answer  to  any  of  my  ques- 
tions, and  still  I  am  always  questioning.     You  see  there- 


TOIL  77 

fore  the  devil  has  eaten  my  reason. — It  is  certain  that 
with  our  narrow  mind  we  can  not  penetrate  the  secret  of 
impulsion  which  God  gives  the  world,  but  we  must  be- 
lieve as  much  as  we  can  that  you  were  washed  once  at 
your  birth  in  baptismal  water,  but  since  then  no  work 
ever  made  you  perspire. 

As  to  myself,  I  was  never  washed  by  the  baptismal 
water;  that  is  why  I  must,  during  my  whole  life  be 
bathed  in  sweat.  And  still  which  of  us  two  is  the  more 
clean?     Is  it  you,  who  are  baptized,  or  I,  who  am  not?     ^ 

Do  you  see  now  what  falseness  can  do?  At  every 
word,  at  every  step  it  obliges  you  to  bend  down  before 
me,  who  am  naught  but  a  feeble  man.  It  is  possible 
that  you  may  overcome  me,  but  it  will  only  be  by  your 
power  to  which  I  cannot  resist;  but  to  destroy  these  argu- 
ments by  proving  their  falseness    you  will  never  be  able. 

During  6,884  years  we  have  been  silent  before  you, 
but  now  we  have  pronouced  a  word  which  you  had 
never  heard  even  in  dreams.  I  do  not  count  on  you  but 
on  your  conscience.  I  hope  that  it  will  come  to  my 
help. 

70.  There  are  in  the  world  many  inventions  that  sur- 
prise the  mind.  To  produce  an  object,  however  small  it 
may  be,  machines  have  been  invented*  A  work  that 
required  several  men,  a  machine  does  it  now  far  better 
than  any  man's  hand. 

But  bread  labor  is  still  at  the  point  where  the 
peasants  found  it  in  ancient  times. 

71.  It  would  be  easy  for  an  inventor  to  say  these 
simple  words:  '^Do  this  or  do  that,"  and  men  and 
beasts  would  be  delivered  from  the  irksome  toil. 

But  no.  He  does  not  wish  to  go  near  to  the  work 
which  he  abhors,  nor  to  those  who  accomplish  it.  He 
has  no  pity  for  the  poor  martyrs — I  mean  the  laborers — 
he  has  no  pity  either  for  the  animals,  while  several  times 


78  TOIL 

a  day  he  eats  the  bread,  or  rather  the  blood  and  tears  of 
the  poor  and  of  the  beasts. 

That  is  how,  O  you,  the  high  society,  you  insult  us, 
and  how,  at  the  same  time  you  disobey  the  command- 
ment and  God  who  gave  it. 

Does  your  conduct  not  show  plainly  the  hatred  you 
have  for  God  and  for  your  brothers  ?  Well,  what  have 
you  to  say?  You  cannot  justify  yourself  before  the 
moujik,  and  you  have  no  excuse  to  give. 

72.  Here  are  other  facts  that  prove  that  you  lower  and 
trample  on  everything.  When  some  one  makes  a  little 
discovery,  you  honor  him  with  a  medal  bearing  the  in- 
scription: "Honor  to  work  and  to  arts."  Has  it  ever 
happened  that  a  reward  has  been  given  for  the  work  and 
the  art  of  making  bread  ?  No.  But  if  anyone  received 
one  it  would  be  some  land  owner,  who  sows  a  thousand 
acres  with  the  hands  of  others,  and  who  never  goes  near 
the  shameful  work  or  those  who  accomplish  it.  Those 
are  the  ones  who  have  received  and  always  will  receive 
the  rewards! 

73.  What  happens  in  the  dwellings  of  the  poor  ?  The 
husband  and  wife  must  not  only  feed  themselves,  but 
also  a  dozen  children  and  their  old  parents.  They 
sell  you  part  of  their  bread,  or  rather  they  give  it  to  you. 

Well,  although  there  have  been  several  million  of  them 
in  each  century,  has  one  of  them  ever  received  a  re- 
ward of  any  kind?  Never.  But  what  am  I  saying? 
Far  from  receiving  rewards,  they  have  received  the 
name  of  moujik,  which  means  "stupid." 

That  must  be  enough  for  you,  peasants ! 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  there  is  not  a  worse  work  on 
the  face  of  the  earth  than  bread  labor ;  and  that  is 
due  to  society.  Was  I  not  right  in  saying  that  you 
love  neither  God  nor  your  brothers,  but  only  your- 
selves? 


TOIL  79 

It  is  annoying  to  see  that  the  millionaire  has  received 
for  a  few  small  things  a  number  of  medals,  and  walks 
around  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets,  as  if  to  say^ 
"Look  at  me  !" 

But  what  is  his  merit  compared  with  ours?  Nothing 
but  ashes  scattered  by  the  wind.  What  can  be  done? 
"God  is  in  heaven  and  the  Czar  is  afar!"  But  if  I  can 
I  will  note  down  all  of  my  complaints  and  hand  them 
to  the  Czar  myself,  and,  having  lost  or  won  everything, 
we  will  only  have  the  choice  between  life  and  death. 
I  have  started  on  the  right  road.  I  will  continue  to 
follow  it  until  my  death;  for  I  have  no  reason  for  de- 
ceiving myself.  I  have  one  foot  on  earth  and  the  other 
in  the  grave,  and  I  am  over  sixty. 

74.  When  my  works  will  be  read  to  a  laborer  know- 
ing neither  a  nor  b,  how  well  he  will  understand  them  ! 
How  well  the  words  will  penetrate  into  his  soul !  How 
grateful  he  will  be  for  having  been  taught  the  law  of  sal- 
vation !  How  hurriedly  he  will  promise  to  work  more 
than  ever ! 

But  he  who  avoids  work  is,  on  the  contrary,  like  the 
dog  that  chews  the  stone  you  throw  at  him.  He  criti- 
cises every  reflection,  and  he  hates  me,  me  who  wrote 
them.  Lastly  he  threatens  me  with  suffering  for  the 
future. 

Why  is  there  such  a  difference  between  those  two 
men?  Because  from  the  laborer  to  his  superiors  the 
distance  is  such  that  their  opinions  will  never  be  the 
same. 

But  what  did  God  wish  to  make  me? 

He  gave  us  the  law,  that  is,  bread  labor.  The  work 
is  not  difficult,  but  easy  and  useful;  it  is  no  long,  but 
short  and  easily  understood.  How  could  we  help  being 
grateful  to  him? 


8o  TOIL 

But  what  has  happened  in  the  world?  One  half  of 
the  men  run  towards  that  work,  while  the  other  half 
avoid  it,  like  a  deadly  poison,  and  hide  away  in  solitary 
spots  that  they  may  not  see  it.  Who  are  those  who 
fly  and  hide?  The  ignorant,  perhaps?  No,  the  most 
learned  and  intelligent.  Those  who  do  not  believe  in 
God,  perhaps?     No,  the  true  believers. 

75.  Your  principal  objection  against  bread  labor  is  : 
Whatever  may  be  the  occupation  of  a  man,  whataver 
his  work,  he  obeys  this  commandment :  "You  will 
knead  your  bread  with  the  sweat  of  your  brow." 
That  explanation  can  suit  neither  God  nor  man. 

It  has  been  said :  "Your  earth  will  be  cursed  in  its 
products."  Is  there  any  allusion  there  to  your  occupa- 
tion?    No. 

And  again:  "Be  in  affliction  every  day  of  your  life." 
In  these  words  bread  labor  is  not  plainly  spoken 
of.  And  again :  "You  will  cultivate  the  thistles  and 
the  briars.  Is  there  any  allusion  there  to  your  constant 
occupations?  And  again:  "You  will  eat  the  grass  of 
the  fields."  Is  there,  I  ask  it  once  more,  the  slightest 
allusion  to  your  occupations?  No. 

Lastly:  ''You  will  knead  your  bread  with  the  sweat  of 
your  brow,  you  are  dust  and  you  will  return  to  dust." 

Well,  the  learned  find  another  subterfuge  and  pretend 
that  it  is  not  only  to  the  plow  that  the  words  are  applied 
but  also  to  their  pen  and  they  give  strong  reasons  for  it. 

76.  But  is  it  possible  that  God  has  given  to  us  alone 
that  irksome  duty  of  working  the  earth,  while  he  would 
have  ordered  you  to  avoid  it  with  the  help  of  your 
money? 

'*In  my  house,"  says  the  rich  man,  ''the  money  works 
for  the  bread." 

It  is  not  so.  ^loney  has  not  sinned  against  God.  That 
commandment  was   never   pronounced  against  money. 


TOIL  8i 

And  then  money  does  not  eat  bread;  it  is  therefore  not 
obliged  to  work.  ''How  can  you  say  then,  money  works 
in  my  hpuse!"  Do  you  think  yourself  perfectly  pure  in 
the  eyes  of  God  that  you  need  no  commandment?  But 
were  you  even  more  saintly  than  the  Saint  of  Saints, 
you  do  eat  nevertheless  the  bread  made  by  others. 

Really,  you  must  not  hope  to  escape  alive  from  the 
hands  of  an  adversary  such  as  me. 

Here  is  another  excuse  you  offer:  *'If  everybody  were 
occupied  with  agriculture,  all  of  'the  manufactories 
must  stop  and  the  universe  will  die."  Nothing  is  more 
false.  There  will  be,  for  a  fact,  eighty  hoUidays  during 
which  all  occupations  will  be  interrupted  and  efery  man 
will  spend  eighty  other  days  in  idleness.  Do  you  think 
that  because  a  husband  and  his  wife  work  an  acre  for 
thirty  days  at  various  times  of  the  year,  do  you  think 
that  the  world  will  come  to  an  end?     Why  should  it  be? 

''In  all  large  cities,  especially  in  Moscow,  where  there 
is  a  large  number  of  manufactories,  there  is  about  a 
million  of  inhabitants.  Where  would  the  ground  be 
found  if  every  one  was  to  cultivate  the  ground?" 

That  is  another  excuse  of  those  who  avoid  work. 

I  will  say  in  answer  to  that  objection  that  the  manu- 
facturers went  of  their  own  accord  or  were  obliged  to  go 
to  the  towns.  But  could  the  factories  not  .be  established 
in  open  ground,  where  some  could  perform  bread  labor 
and  others  work  in  the  factory,  make  money,  and  where 
they  could  change  about?  All  that  could  be  easily  done  if 
you  wished  to  help  the  lower  classes.  But  you  think 
only  of  yourselves  and  those  like  you. 

You  leave  the  said  bread  labor  because  there  is  not 
much  earth  and  because  if  every  one  began  to  work 
there  would  not  be  space  enough?  If  you  ever  did  b^- 
gin  to  work  you  would  plow  up  all  of  the  earth. 


82  TOIL 

As  to  myself,  I  have  ten  acres  of  wheat,  but  if  the  revo- 
lution took  place,  I  would  be  satisfied  with  five;  and  the 
other  five,  it  is  you,  my  friend,  who  would  plow  them 
up  with  those  white  hands  of  yours  in  spite  of  the  heat 
or  the  frost,  in  bad  weather  or  in  the  srtow,  even  if  you 
were  shaking  with  fever  and  your  hands  were  like  spider's 
claws. 

Is  it  admissible  that  we  alone  should  endure  all  of 
that  trouble? 

79.  If  you  are  so  thoroughly  convinced  that  we  eat 
the  bread  of  your  work,  why  do  you  sell  it  to  us?  We  do 
not  oblige  you  to.  You  come  and  ask  us  to  buy  it. 
Is  it  our  fault? 

If  all  the  laborers  were  familiar  with  the  primitive  law, 
they  would  not  sell  their  bread  and  would  only  give  it  in 
certain  admissible  cases,  as  many  of  them  do  already. 
But  where  would  they  get  their  money?  They  will 
know  how  to  find  it. 

The  lazy  man,  like  the  door  on  its  hinges,  remains  all 
his  life  lying  on  the  down  of  his  bed.  He  has  never  seen 
how  bread  is  worked.  That  is  why,  by  the  time  he  has 
read  ten  articles  of  my  book,  he  pushes  it  away  saying, 
"  That  is  vitriol!  "  The  verdict  seems  deep  and  well 
deserved. 

He  is  not  the  one  who  found  that  word;  Providence 
was  speaking  through  his  mouth,  because  for  him  the 
bread  of  his  own  work  is  vitriol,  while  the  bread  of  the 
work  of  others  is  sweeter  than  honey. 

You  see,  readers,  how  much  falseness  loves  itself. 
And  if  it  did  not  find  itself  amiable,  to  whom  would  it 
seem  pleasant  and  virtuous? 

80.  ''Why  is  falseness  called  by  the  name  of  false- 
ness?" I  said  one  day  to  myself,  thinking  about  the  capi- 
talist. It  should  have  been  better  named,  for  it  is  more 
truthful  t])an  truth  itself;     it  uj^yeils  and  betrays  itself, 


TOIL  83 

It  has  been  said:  ^ '  The  voice  of  your  brother's  blood 
cries  towards  me  from  the  earth."  Thus  God  spoke  to 
Cain,  to  the  voice  of  falseness.  If  it  cried  towards  God, 
why  did  it  remain  silent  towards  the  world?  ''And  God 
marked  Cain  with  the  sign  of  criminals."  Does  he  not, 
even  now,  mark  all  the  wicked  men  with  that  sign,  and, 
with  them,  the  lazy  man  who  has  become  my  best  teach- 
er and  to  whom  I  will  be  eternally  grateful? 

81.  You  do  not  answer.  You  must  agree  with  me, 
then. 

Here  is,  however,  the  answer  you  could  present  and 
the  objection  you  could  make,  in  reality,  against  bread 
labor:  ''I  can  not  do  several  things  at  once.  If  I  am 
busy  with  agriculture,  I  will  not  have  time  to  think  of 
anything  else." 

But  I  will  answer  in  my  turn:  ''I  have,  outside  of  the 
bread,  many  things  to  do.  How  is  it  that  I  who  am  an 
ignorant  moujik,  I  can  handle  it  all,  make  decisions  and 
execute  them  rapidly?  If  I  were  as  intelligent  as  you,  I 
would  handle  several  thousands  of  matters.  Why  then, 
being  so  infinitely  bright,  can  you  think  of  but  a  single 
matter?  " 

82.  When  you  are  avoiding  bread  labor,  or  when  your 
conscience  is  tormenting  you,  you  say  to  yourself:  ''If 
we  were  all  performing  bread  labor — where  would  the 
poor  people  get  their  money,  who  live  by  their  labor? 
They  give  us  bread,  but  in  exchange,  we  give  them  money, 
and  thus  the  peasants  live,  thanks  to  us,  and  we,  thanks 
to  them.  The  hand  washes  the  hand  and  they  are  both 
white." 

No,  your  argument  does  not  disconcert  us.  We  are 
not  as  stupid  as  you  think,  and  you,  yourself,  you  are 
not  as  intelligent  as  you  believe.  Do  not  forget  that  the 
man  you  are  speaking  to  is  the  one  who  remains  on  the 
threshold  of  your  palace  (like  Lazarus), 


84  TOIL 

One  half  of  the  living  beings  does  not  perform  bread 
labor  and  knows  where  to  get  the  money;  the  other  half, 
working  it  and  not  selling  it,  can  hardly  suffice  to  its  own 
needs.  And  still  it  knows  where  to  find  money.  During 
a  bad  crop  there  are  entire  districts  which  do  not  sell, 
but  buy;  and  they  know  where  to  find  money.  But  why 
should  the  second  half  not  learn  where  to  find  money, 
if  everybody  performed  bread  labor? 

Far  from  being  useful,  the  sale  of  bread  is  injurious. 
This  year  the  crop  is  good  and  the  farmer  sells  his  wheat 
to  the  rich  man  for  hfty  kopeks  the  measure.  He  thinks 
that  what  wheat  he  has  left  will  be  sufficient  for  his 
needs.  But  let  us  suppose  that  the  crop  is  bad  the  next 
year,  and  there  is  a  famine.  He  will  buy  his  wheat  back 
from  the  same  man  for  a  rouble  and  fifty  kopeks  per 
measure  and  if  he  has  not  enough  money  to  pay  for  it,  he 
will  give  him  his  cattle  at  half  price.  Thus  he  has  not 
sufficient  for  his  own  needs,  he  has  sold  his  wheat,  he  has, 
lost  his  cattle,  and,  all  told,  he  is  reduced  to  beggary 
forever.  That  is  the  way  in  which  many  ruin  themselves 
by  selling  their  wheat.  How  can  you  then  say  that  the 
peasants  can  only  live  with  the  sale  of  their  wheat  and 
that  without  it,  they  would  starve  to  death?  The  real 
conclusion  is,  that  you  are  living  on  others.  Your  money 
is  the  money  of  our  work,  and  whatever  you  have  be- 
longs to  us. 

Plow,  according  to  the  commandment,  a  single  acre  of 
wheat,  and  everything  will  belong  to  you. 

83.  It  happens  to  me  not  to  have  a  single  cent,  some- 
times for  two  months.  However,  when  I  am  tired  from 
working  all  day,  I  make  my  tura  (bread  crumbled  into 
kvass):  I  eat  well;  the  tura  tastes  better  to  me  than  your 
delicate  food;  then  I  sing  as  I  return  to  work. 

But  you,  if  you  remained  two  months  without  my 
bread,  what  songs  would  you  sing? 


TOIL  «5 

Now  examine  well,  reader,  which  of  us  two  lives  the 
more  on  the  other.     Is  it  you  or  I?     It  is  you 

In  that  case  why  do  you  count  yourself  as  one  of  my 
friends?  Which  of  us  two  should  occupy  the  first  seat 
at  table?  I  should  most  certainly.  But  why  have  you 
taken  it  ?  Who  showed  you  the  seat  and  did  you  the 
honor  ? 

Protect  yourself  with  reasonable  answers,  or  else  do 
not  eat  our  bread.  Or,  if  you  consent  to,  plow  with  your 
hands  a  single  acre  of  ground  and  sit  down.  Otherwise 
begone. 

84.  It  seems  to  me  that  your  answers  will  be  the  same 
as  those  of  the  rich  man  who  said:  I  would  like  to  work, 
but  I  know  not  how.  Once  only  in  my  life  have  I  held 
a  scythe  in  my  hand;  I  swung  it  as  hard  as  I  could,  but 
it  only  bent  the  grass  over.  Then  I  went  still  harder, 
and  it  cut  into  the  ground.  After  that  I  took  a  sickle, 
and  after  a  long  torture,  I  had  hardly  reaped  half  a  sheaf, 
but  I  had  cut  my  hand.  That  is  what  happened  to  me 
one  day  when  I  was  in  the  fields.  And  then  if  I  was  go- 
ing to  work  in  earnest,  all  of  my  companions  would  look 
at  me  and  laugh  at  the  strange  sight. 

But  why  do  you  know  how  to  eat  ?  I  asked.  Before 
you  were  two  years  old  you  could  eat  already,  and  now 
you  are  old  and  do  not  know  how  to  work  yet! 

And  I  said  besides:  Is  it  from  lack  of  strength  or 
from  lack  of  will  that  you  do  not  know  how  to  work  ? 

85.  The  rich  man  gave  me  besides  the  following  ex- 
cuses: I.  I  would  work  the  bread,  according  to  the 
commandment;  but  I  am  ashamed;  I  would  be  pointed 
at.  2.  Is  it  right  for  a  rich  man  like  myself  to  work 
with  the  poor?  3.  All  intelligent  and  learned  men 
would  exclude  me  from  their  society.  4.  By  working 
the  bread  I  could  earn  but  thirty  kopeks,  while  at  home 
with  my  pen  I  could  earn  ten  roubles. 


86  TOIL 

Such  are  the  reasons  for  which  the  learned  class  has 
rejected  the  work  in  which  it  sees  nothing  but  losses 
and  humilation. 

86.  But,  they  add,  will  we  be  guilty  in  the  eyes  of 
God?  No,  for  Jesus-Christ  told  us,  while  he  was  dying 
for  us,  not  to  sin  ana  not  to  fulfill  the  commandment, 
which  means  not  to  work  for  the  bread;  for  he  said: 
''Look  at  the  birds  of  the  sky,  etc.,"  That  is  why  we 
do  not  work  the  bread  and  never  will  do  it. 

87.  But  if  you  are  redeemed,-  I  answered,  why  do 
you  eat  the  fruit  of  the  work  of  others?  Can  it  be  possi- 
ble that  God  has  redeemed  you  without  redeeming  us? 
If  he  had  redeemed  mankind,  he  should  have  ordered  the 
wheat  to  grow  ready  kneaded  and  cooked  to  suit  the 
taste  of  each  one,  or  else  he  should  have  sent  us  manna 
from  heaven,  as  he  sent  it  to  the  Israelites  in  the  desert. 

It  is  evident  that  he  has  not  redeemed  man  neither 
from  the  sin,  nor  from  the  commandment  which  is  the 
bread  labor.  But  each  one  of  us  must  redeem 
himself  by  his  actions,  and  not  count  on  the  merit  of 
others,  I  mean  of  Christ. 

88.  We  sin,  we  disobey  the  divine  precepts  and  we 
incur  consequently  the  curses  given  in  the  Deuter- 
onomy. According  to  your  view  it  is  not  thus.  You 
seem  to  think  that  Jesus  Christ  takes  on  himself  all  of 
our  sins  and  curses.  What  a  fine  invention!  And  how 
exact  your  idea  is!  No,  each  one  must  redeem  himself  by 
adhering  to  the  primitive  commandment:  ''Eat  the 
bread  of  your  work."  There  is  no  greater  virtue,  and 
to  disdain  it  is  the  most  dangerous  of  crimes. 

89.  If  you  are  rich,  live  in  luxury  as  much  as  you 
can,  be  as  proud  as  you  wish,  have  as  fine  a,  table  as 
you  can  desire,  but  do  not  avoid  the  bread  labor, 
do  better  even  and  hasten  to  accomplish  it. 


TOIL  87 

90.  Between  the  rich  and  the  poor  there  is  always 
a  great  and  implacable  enmity.  But  when  they  meet 
face  to  face,  they  dissimulate.  Whence  comes  that 
hatred?  Are  the  rich  or  the  poor  to  be  blamed  for  it? 
According  to  Sirach :  "What  can  there  be  in  common 
between  a  saint  and  a  dog  (impious,  a  sinner)?  And 
what  can  bind  a  rich  man  to  a  poor? 

"Just  as  humility  is  abominated  by  the  proud,  so  has 
the  rich  a  horror  for  the  poor." 

Whose  fault  is  it,  that  of  the  rich  and  not  of  the  poor 
laborers? 

I  have  asked  it  before  and  I  ask  it  again :  do  not 
forget  that  I  who  remain  on  the  threshold  of  rich  pal- 
aces like  Lazarus  I  am  speaking  in  the  name  of  the 
laborers,  to  you  of  the  high  classes,  and  not  to  you 
alone,  reader. 

91.  It  will  be  said:  So  and  so  works  ten  times 
more  than  the  laborer;  can  he  be  called  lazy? 

On  holidays  the  former  works  and  the  latter  remains 
in  bed,  useful  neither  to  himself,  to  his  brothers  nor  to 
God.  It  is  said  that  in  that  case  the  lazy  man  does 
his  duty,  while  the  laborer  commits  a  crime  by  break- 
ing the  fourteenth  commandment.  Is  that  case  not  the 
same  as  that  which  we  are  considering? 

During  three  hundred  and  thirty  days  of  the  year,  do 
whateX^er  you  please,  but  during  thirty-five  days,  at 
various  times  of  the  year,  every  man  should  work  at 
the  bread. 

92.  But  why  am  I  so  long  when  a  few  words  should 
be  enough?  It  is  because  it  is  necessary  to  throw  a 
strong  obstacle  in  the  way  of  the  subterfuges  behind 
which  you  intrench  yourself,  and,  for  that,  I  need  to 
make  a  long  answer  to  your  numerous  arguments. 

Since  there  is  for  God  neither  past  nor  future,  and 
that  everything  appears  as  present,   is    it    possible   that 


88  TOIL 

He  has  not  understood  that  if  man  must  always  eat 
bread,  he  must  also  continue  to  work?  If  He  was 
prescribing  an  atonement  for  your  sins  and  said  :  **  Take 
this  stone  of  a  hundred  pounds  and  carry  it,"  you  would 
answer:  ^' My  God,  I  cannot,  for  you  have  not  given 
me  strength  enough."  Or  else  if  He  said  :  ''  Fly  through 
the  air  like  a  bird,"  you  would  answer  :  "  You  have  given 
me  no  wings  and  it  is  impossible  for  me  to  do  what  you 
order."     Your  excuse  would  be  legitimate. 

But  why  can  you  not  work  the  bread ?  *'  In  truth, "  you 
will  answer,  **  it  is  simply  owing  to  my  situation,  I  have 
white  and  delicate  hands  and  the  straw  would  prick  my 
skin." 

94.  You  avoid  again  the  work  of  bread  labor  because, 
you  say,  by  keeping  occupied  with  any  work,  one  is 
obeying  the  commandment :  "Knead  your  bread  with 
the  sweat  of  your  brow. " 

One  says :  "I  have  written  to-day  nine  hundred  and 
ninety-one  lines,  therefore  I  have  eaten  my  bread  with 
the  sweat  of  my  brow."  Another  :  "I  have  given  to-day 
a  few  orders  to  my  people,  I  watched  to  see  that  they 
worked  well  for  me,  therefore  I  eat  my  bread  with  the 
sweat  of  my  brow."  A  third  :  *'  I  took  a  drive  to-day  in 
town  in  a  handsome  carriage ;  I  therefore  eat  my  bread 
with  the  sweat  of  my  brow."  A  fourth:  "I  sold  to-day 
some  spoiled  goods,  and  I  cheated  a  greenhorn ;  I  am 
eating  my  bread  with  the  sweat  of  my  brow.  " 

And  the  thief  says  in  his  turn: 

**  I  did  not  sleep  all  night,  I  worked  with  my  hands; 
I  am  eating  my  bread,  more  than  any  of  you,  with  the 
sweat  of  my  brow." 

If  it  is  not  by  truth,  it  will  at  least  be  by  eloquence  and 
skill  that  they  all  gain  their  cause,  as  says  Kriloff,  *  ^*The 

*  Kriloff  (Ivan  Andreievitch),  fabulist,  born  in  a  little  village  of 
Orenburg  in  1768,  died  at  Saint  Petersburg  in  1864.     Attracted  by  the 


TOIL  S9 

animals  who  are  armed  with  claws  or  teeth  are  all  inno- 
cent; they  are  almost  saints,  but  the  timid  ox  is  accused. 
The  tigers  and  the  wolves  cry  against  him;  they  smother 
and  then  sacrifice  him. 

It  seems  as  if  Kriloff  describes  in  the  animals  the 'lab- 
orers and  that  the  ox  is  the  timid  rich  man.  What  do 
you  think  of  it,  reader? 

95.  You  who  eat  the  bread  of  our  work,  you  are  in 
Russia  about  thirty  millions,  including  the  Jews  and  the 
Gypsies.  How  could  we  feed  you  all,  give  you  hand- 
some clothes,  allow  you  to  sleep  in  a  good  bed  with  a 
warm  blanket  over  you? 

Still  it  is  to  do  that  that  we  work  night  and  day,  and 
that  we  endure  all  kinds  of  privations. 

Is  it  not  unjust?     Is  it  not  criminal  on  your  part? 

96.  And,  as  if  you  had  not  heard  what  I  have  said, 
you  answer:  '*0f  what  injustice  are  you  the  victims  and 
what  crime  have  we   committed?     We  do  not  take   your 


theatre  from  his  youth,  he  composed  a  play  called  the  "Coffee-pot," 
(1783),  and  several  comedies  and  tragedies,  of  which  the  most  impor- 
tant are  "Cleopatra"  and  "Philomelee.  ' 

But  that  was  not  his  real  vocation.  In  18400,  following  the  advice  of 
one  of  his  friends,  who  seemed  to  have  had  a  presentiment  of  his  real 
talent,  he  translated  two  fables  of  Lafontaine;  the  "Daughter, "  and 
the  "Oak  and  the  Willow";  his  translation  drew  a  great  deal  of  atten- 
tion by  its  originality  and  its  picturesque  character. 

Published  in  the  "  Spectator  of  Moscow,"  they  had  a  great  success. 
From  that  time  on  Kriloff  devoted  all  of  his  time  to  the  composition 
of  fables  and  became  the  Lafontaine  of  Russia,  imitating  the  French 
Lafontaine. 

However  in  the  hands  of  Kriloff  all  of  the  subjects  become  Russian. 

He  differs  also  from  Lafontaine  and  Lessing  by  his  cutting  jokes 
and  even  by  his  cynicism,  so  highly  appreciated  in  Moscow.  His  com- 
plete fables  form  a  large  book. 

The  fable  quoted  by  Bondareff  is  an  imitation  of  '  •  The  Animals 
Suffering  With  The  Pest"  of  Lafontaine. 


90  TOIL 

bread  for  nothing,  but  we  buy  it  with  the  money  we  earn 
by  our  work." 

'*  And  where  did  you  take  that  money?" 

''learned  it  by  working  according^ to  the  command- 
ment." 

"  But  does  not  our  money  come  from  our  work? 
Money  is  not  given  for  nothing,  it  must  be  earned  by  the 
body  of  flesh  and  bone."  And  then  can  you  redeem  sin 
with  money?     Can  you  buy  God's  law  with  money?" 

Your  excuse  condemns  you  still  more.  You  can  buy 
whatever  you  please  with  money,  but  bread  you  can  buy 
it  at  no  price. 

97.  Do  you  think  yourself  saved  by  the  blessed 
bread  which  you  receive  in  church  from  the  hands  of 
the  priest?  ''But,"  you  will  answer,  "it  is  not  the  bread 
that  saves  me,  it  is  my  belief  in  Christ  whom  I  receive 
under  the  shape  of  bread. "  No,  the  belief  without  the 
good  actions,  without  the  commandment,  is  dead.  You 
go  to  church  and  return  with  two,  because  you  have 
eaten  the  bread  of  the  work    of  others.      "Where?"  you 

will  ask.      "In  church." 

98.  Not  only,  O  rich  people,  you  live  on  the 
work  of  others,  but  you  even  hope  that  in  future  life  you 
will  enjoy  eternal  happiness,  thanks  to  the  merits  of 
another — of  Christ.  That  is  why  you  think  that  you 
have  no  duty  to  accomplish  and  believe  that  you  have 
nothing  to  do  but  to  enjoy  the  goods  of  this  world.  You 
are  walking  on  a  wide  road,  but  where  will  it  lead  you 
to?     You  know  it  as  well  I  do. 

99.  Amongst  you  one  can  often  find  men  who,  when 
fortune  turns  against  them  and  takes  away  their  wealth, 
when  the  circumstances  oblige  them  to  work  the  bread 
themselves,  are  overcome  by  despair,  become  thieves 
and  drunkards,  and  head  all  kinds  of  criminal  under- 
takings.   And,    usually,    they  die    a    violent    death  in 


TOIL 


91 


order  to  escape  the  bread  labor.  But  resurrect 
that  commandment  of  which  you  only  see  the  reality 
when  you  come  to  die,  and  then  the  millionare,  being  in 
the  same  situation  as  you,  will  not  avoid  the  work  but 
will  accomplish  the  work  willingly. 

100.  Let  us  speak  now,  reader,  of  the  three  kinds  of 
men:  Of  the  Jew,  the  Gypsy,  and  of  the  learned  Euro- 
pean, who,  like  the  first  two,  eats  the  bread  of  the  work 
of  others.  Which  is  the  one  who  displeases  the  most 
God  and  the  living  beings? 

It  is  certainly  the  European,  for  there  is  nothing  to  be 
said  of  the  Gypsy  who  is  half  wild.  As  to  the  Jew,  he 
was  once  the  master  of  the  world,  and  obliged  all  others 
to  do  bread  labor;  but  now  that  time  is  no  longer. 
To-day  the  Jew  has  become  the  tail  from  the 
head  that  he  was,  and,  like  the  first  two,  he  eats  the 
the  bread  of  the  work  of  others. 

I  ask  which  of  those  three  men  seems  the  most  intol- 
erable God  and  to  man. 

1 01.  I  know  that  the  reader  will  answer  this:  "Can 
I  be  compared  to  the  Jew  and  the  Gypsy.  I  live  on 
truth  and  they  on  lies  and  duplicity."  *'Yes,  if  you  had 
the  body  of  an  angel  and  not  that  of  a  man.  But  when 
yoti  eat  the  bread  of  the  work  of  others,  there  is  not  in 
that  food  a  single  atom  of  truth.  It  has  been  about  two 
hours  since  you  have  eaten,  and  you  are  already  think- 
ing of  holding  out  your  hand  towards  the  same  tree  of 
life,  towards  the  bread  which  you  are  really  not  allowed 
to  taste.  How  can  you  then  pride  yourself  on  saying 
the  truth?" 

102.  From  all  of  the  arguments  that  precede  it  is 
easy  to  conclude  that  there  is  nothing  more  infamous 
than  the  bread  of  other  people's  work.  On  the  contrary, 
there  is  nothing  more  sacred,  nothing  more  wholesome, 
than  the  bread  of  one's  own  work.     That  is  not  a  suppo- 


92 


TOIL 


sition  I  am  making,  but  an  assertion  which  I  draw  from 
from  the  fundamental  laws  of  God,  with  which  our 
natural  law  is   in  perfect  accord, 

103.  I  have  said  that,  according  to  your  view,  the 
lazy  and  idle  life  was  the  one  indicated  by  the  law  of  sal- 
vation. I  did  not  give  at  the  time  proofs  enough.  But 
now  I  will  prove  it  unquestionably.  (We  will  not  speak 
of  those  who  live  day  by  day,  taking  things  as  they  come.) 

To  win  eternal  happiness,  the  servants  of  God  retire 
to  monasteries,  deserts,  mountains  or  islands,  where  they 
lead  a  wandering  life. 

What  are  they  looking  for  in  those  spots,  those  who 
trample  under  foot  the  divine  law,  who  eat  the  bread  of 
the  work  of  others? 

Can  one  not  be  virtuous  while  accomplishing  the  work 
blessed  by  God? 

104.  When  the  crop  is  bad  the  poor  is  sad;  the  rich, 
on  the  contrary,  is  happy  because  the  famine  will  help 
him  to  increase  his  wealth.  That  is  why  he  calls  the 
famine  ''the  mercy,"  and  the  good  crop  ''the  punishment" 
of  God.  And  if  he  takes  part  on  the  complaints  of  the 
poor,  do  not  believe  him,  the  hypocrite,  he  is  lying. 

105.  And  you  say  that  the  two  classes  are  not  each 
other's  enemies! 

The  rich  will  immediately  offer  this  excuse:  "What 
does  my  wealth  amount  to?  There  are  people  who  are 
a  hundred  times  more  wealthy  than  I  am;  it  is  to  them 
that  you  must  attribute  all  of  the  misfortunes  which  you 
accuse  me  of  causing." 

To  that  I  will  answer:  Wealth  must  not  be  measured 
by  its  amount,  but  by  the  number  of  peasants  who  sur- 
round the  rich,  for,  in  the  country  those  who  have  five 
thousand  roubles  are  more  wealthy  than  the  millionaire 
of  Moscow. 


TOIL  93 

But  if  you  could  see,  reader  of  the  city,  the  misfor- 
tunes which  the  rich  man  heaps  onto  the  poor  in  the  coun- 
try, you  would  think  more  of  my  arguments.  Otherwise 
you  will  never  believe  me. 

io6.  The  poor,  the  laborer,  thinks  day  and  night, 
during  his  whole  life,  of  the  best  way  of  preparing  his 
field  for  the  wheat,  of  his  cattle  and  his  instruments. 
From  their  childhood  he  accustomed  his  children  to  the 
same  work.  His  efforts  are  crowned  with  success.  On 
the  contrary,  the  rich  man  thinks  day  and  night  of  the 
way  of  buying  from  the  poor  at  half  price  and  selling  back 
to  him  for  twice  what  the  goods  are  worth,  and  he  accus- 
toms his  sons,  from  their  childhood  to  those  speculations. 

The  first  and  the  last  of  the  laws  imposed  by  God  con- 
cern work,  the  principal  of  which  is  bread  labor; 
but  the  intelligent  and  learned  people  have  en- 
deavored to  avoid  work,  and  live  with  their  hands  in 
their  pockets  like  pomestchiks.  They  have  loaded  ev- 
ery thing  onto  the  poor  and  the  weak;  but  the  latter  do 
not  lose  their  coolness;  they  rob,  kill,  burn  and  deceive 
each  other. 

It  is  really  well  done.  As  says  the  proverb,  the  boss 
is  for  his  bread  (meaning  his  interest),  and  the  workman 
is  as  cunning  as  his  boss;  for,  if  intelligent  people  hide 
away  the  light,  there  is  no  reason  why  wei  should  leave 
it  there.     Act  then  as  best  you  can,  laborer. 

107.  Still  the  poor  is  very  humble  before  you,  O  rich 
man.  And  if,  besides  that  you  are  deceitful  with  him, 
he  falls  alive  into  your  hands. 

It  is  thus  that  the  poor  goes  to  the  rich  and  returns 
half  naked.  Sirach  says  rightly :  "The  lion  is  the 
game  of  the  savages  in  the  desert ;  likewise  the  poor 
are  the  food  of  the  rich." 

Here  is  what  happens  generally  in  the  poor  regions 
where  a  rich  man  has  taken  root.     The  poor  must  buy 


94  TOIL 

everything  from  him  and  sell  everything  to  him. 

And  the  rich  man  says  besides :  "The  business  which 
I  am  doing  is  honest  and  loyal.  Every  sale  is  an  under- 
standing on  both  sides.  Do  you  or  do  you  not  wish  to 
buy  from  me  and  sell  to  me?  Trade  is  not  a  sin.  I 
have  neither  false  weights  nor  false  measures ;  I  never 
deceive  in  the  accounts.  And  really  it  is  only  right  to  say 
that  I  eat    my    bread  by  the  sweat  of  my  brow." 

How  can  one  argue  with  him  !  All  that  he  says  is 
very  insulting  for  us.  He  does  not  understand  the 
meaning  ot  the  commandment,  otherwise  his  conscience 
would  begin  to  speak  in  him. 

log.  And  again  the  rich  give  the  following  excuse : 
"I  give  men  money  to  have  them  work  for  me.  My 
interest  would  be  to  give  them  no  work,  but  I  do  just 
the  same.  And  therefore  I  hope  to  be  rewarded  by 
God.  And  then  if  it  were  not  for  me,  where  would 
they  find  the  money  that  they  need?"  I  answer:  "You 
should  make  a  better  use  of  the  wealth  you  have  ac- 
cumulated by  working,  by  obeying  the  commandment  I 
have  spoken  of;  you  should  wash  yourself  with  clean 
and  not  with  dirty  water.  But  you  pretend  to  help 
men  with  the  result  of  their  work.  And  who  earned 
the  money  that  you  give  them?  Is  it  your  money? 
No,  it  belongs  to  those  workmen.  What  do  you  then 
hope  to  be  rewarded  for? 

no.  It  is  said  in  the  law:  "Such  the  workman, 
such  the  work;  such  the  earth,  such  the  fruits:  "in 
other  words,  if  we  are,  according  to  you,  ignorant 
moujiks  and  useless  factors  in  society,  why  do  you  like 
our  work,  the  bread?  Believe  me,  reader,  if  I  were  as 
intelligent  and  as  learned  as  you,  I  would  never  eat 
bread,  but  I  would  always  eat  money,  and,  with  gold,  I — 

III.  Each  one  of  you  will  say:  "I  love  and  respect 
the    workman   and    bread    labor,    I  have    nothing   but 


TOIL  95 

hatred  and  contempt  for  idleness."  To  those  as- 
sertions I  will  answer  by  the  proverb  ;  "1  hear  the  voice 
of  Jacob  and  I  go  unto  Esau." 

112.  We  should  not  give  a  single  grain  of  wheat. 
"Why  so?"  the  reader  will  ask.  Because  one  half  of 
humanity  will  not  go  near  the  work  of  the  earth,  and 
the  other  half  only  works  in  spite  of  itself,  not  knowing 
where  to  seek  refuge,  so  full  is  the  world  of  laziness. 
Where  three  or  four  men  would  suffice,  ten  or  fifteen 
arrive,  and  not  having  eaten  for  a  day  or  two,  crowd 
one  on  top  of  the  other.  If  one  is  repulsed  he  becomes 
the  most  terrible  of  robbers  and  criminals. 

113.  I  repeat  that  we  should  not  give  a  single  grain 
of  wheat.  Let  us  except  only  the  women  who  fulfil 
exactly  the  commandment  of  God  which  we  quoted, 
also  the  aged  men  who  have  worked  before,  but  who 
have  lost  their  strength,  the  crippled  and  the  children 
who  will  work  in  the  future.  Oh,  heaven,  listen  to  my 
prayer !  Give  us  for  them  an  abundance  of  the  fruits 
of  the  earth. 

114.  "Do  not  do  unto  others  what  you  do  not  wish 
to  have  done  unto  yourself."  That  is  the  law.  It  is 
well,  and,  as  for  myself,  I  do  not  believe  there  are  any 
other  virtues.  But,  let  me  ask,  the  question,  if  you 
do  not  wish  to  have  the  others  eat  the  bread  of  your 
work,  why  do  you  eat  the  bread  of  their  work ;  in  other 
words,  why  do  you  do  to  others  what  you  would  not 
have  done  to  yourself? 

"I  buy  my  bread  with  money." 

"Very  well  then ;  you  have  always  the  same  song  on 
your  lips,  and  it  sets  my  teeth  on  edge. " 

115.  Have  I  not  said  before  that  bread  can  not  be 
bought  at  any  price,  that  it  can  be  bought  only  by 
work,  for  its  price  can  not  be  settled  by  the  human 
mind.     In  certain  legitimate  cases  it  must  be  given  and 


96  TOIL 

taken.  But  you  have  arrived  at  this  result  that  in  cer- 
tain towns  of  Russia,  a  measure  of  bread  costs  no  more 
than  a  measure  of  dry  muck. 

How  ignominious !  At  the  sole  recollection  of  that  in- 
sult which  we  endured,  I  feel  a  cold  shiver  run  through 
me. 

But  for  you,  rich  people,  nothing  is  cheaper  than  the 
bread.  Everything  is  as  it  should  be.  That  is  what 
you  call  law. 

1 1 6.  Have  pity  on  us,  O  you  of  the  high  classes! 
Do  not  annihilate  my  words.  If  they  are  illegal,  only 
crush  my  own  person ;  but  allow  my  work  to  remain  in 
the  archives  where  you  leave  the  most  important  State 
papers.  There  may  be  found  in  the  future  generation 
some  man  sufficiently  just  to  publish  all  that.  Let  me 
die  alone,  if  only  the  millions  of  laborers  who  live  after 
me  can  have  a  great  joy  and  find  some  relief  in  their  toil. 

117.  In  spite  of  the  studying  you  have  done  from 
your  childhood  until  old  age,  consider  how  large  the 
distance  is  that  separates  you  from  a  good,  ignorant  la- 
borer :  One  step  !  A  man  of  the  higher  class,  but  of 
inferior  degree,  a  public  functionary  and  a  man  of  our 
class,  the  starckina,  (the  magistrate  of  a  canton)  unite 
to  make  an  inquiry  in  view  of  a  proposed  lawsuit.  The 
canton  gives  the  functionary  a  few  cases  of  wine  and 
he  consents  to  arrange  everything.  He  changes  the 
facts  and  hands  a  false  report  to  his  superior  who  no- 
tices nothing  uncommon,  and  signs  the  papers.  Thus 
the  innocent  man  has  become  the  guilty  and  vice  versa ; 
and  that  through  the  complicity  of  the  superior  with 
the  inferior. 

118.  But  why  was  he  deceived  ?  Because  not  only  he 
does  not  work  the  bread,  but  he  does  not  even  know 
how  it  is  done.  But  if  besides  science  he  was  familiar 
with    bread    labor,     his     intelligence     would     be      so 


TOIL 


97 


enlightened  that  he  could  not  be  deceived.  You  see 
how  niany  faults  and  mistakes  are   caused   by  idleness. 

119.  Here  is  what  the  talented  writers  do:  If  they 
have  to  criticise  a  superior  they  soften  their  words  and 
tell  him  the  fable  of  the  geese  of  Kriloff :  "I  might 
have  insisted  more  on  the  fable,"  he  says,  "but  I  did 
not  want  to  irritate  the  geese." 

In  other  words,  he  has  not  told  him  the  truth  out 
and  out,  but  he  has  beaten  around  the  bush- 
But  I,  whether  it  be  through  clumsiness  or  through 
love  of  the  truth,  I  irritate  the  geese.  What  do  you 
think  of  it,  reader? 

They  will  strike  me  with  their  beaks  until  they  kill 
me.  What  does  it  matter :  whatever  it  may  cost  me, 
I  can  not  remain  silent,  I  will  not  draw  the  veil  of 
hypocrisy  over  my  thought.  But  since  I  have  started 
on  the  right  road,  I  will  continue  to  follow  it  until 
my  death.  I  will  wander  neither  to  the  right  nor  to 
the  left. 

There  is  a  book  called  Civil  Marriage.  I  have  never 
read  it,  but  I  know  that  in  it  the  pomestchik  Ko- 
vosseslky  complains  of  a  peasant  before  his  wife: 
''Just  imagine,"  says  he,  ''that  villainous  servant  put 
a  cold  shirt  on  me!  "  (I  can  not  help  laughing  as  I  copy 
this  complaint)  "I  scold  him  and  he  answers:  '  I  al- 
ways put  a  cold  shirt  on  your  father  the  general." 

That  trait  astounded  me.  Laziness  has  overpowered 
man  to  such  an  extent  that  he  finds  intolerable  the  obli- 
gation of  putting  on  his  own  shirt. 

We  must  conclude  that  if  he  were  shown  the  everlast- 
ing fire  in  which  he  will  burn  eternally  with  his  descend- 
ants, as  says  the  Christian  tradition,  he  would  prefer  to 
be  plunged  into  it  rather  than  pick  up  a  straw  or  a  grain 
of  wheat. 

Toil-7 


gS  TOIL 

Into  what  are  men  cast  by  laziness,  idleness  and  lux- 
ury? But  speak  to  the  wealthy  of  the  divine  command- 
ment, and  he  will  eloquently  oppose  to  you  a  hundred 
arguments  to  prove  that  he  eats  his  bread  with  the  sweat 
of  his  brow. 

121.  I  would  like  to  ask  (but  I  know  not  who  to  turn 
to)  if  it  is  possible  that  the  pomestchiks  have  had  their 
shirts  put  on  them.  *'  Nothing  is  more  true,"  I  hear  on 
all  sides!  ''they  have  even  had  their  drawers  drawn  on 
as  if  they  were  dead. "  But  what  are  they  doing  with 
their  hands  meanwhile? 

That  is  an  instance  of  laziness  one  could  never  have 
imagined  if  it  had  not  been  true. 

122.  How  they  have  suffered,  the  slave-peasants! 
The  recollection  alone  of  their  sorrows  is  painful  to  me. 
"When  I  think  of  it,  it  makes  me  shudder.  It  would 
have  been  far  better  for  them  never  to  have  been  born. 
Even  had  I  several  tongues  and  tried  my  best  to  say 
everything,  it  would  be  impossible  for  me  to  expose  all 
the  calamities  which  befell  them,  all  the  tortures  which 
those  martyrs  endured. 

Human  lips  can  not  express  their  suffering.  But  I 
will  tell  you  the  outrage  that  we  are  enduring.  It  may 
be  that  you,  who  are  reading  me,  are  a  pomestchik 
yourself.  But  I  shall  tell  the  truth  nevertheless,  that  no 
one  can  accuse  me  of  falsehood.  And  then  I  have  been 
myself  a  laborer  wi  th  a  pomestchik  on  the  Don. 

123.  Three  days  a  week  the  peasant  works  for  him- 
self; on  the  three  other  days  he  works  with  all  of  his 
family  for  the  pomestchik.  His  wife,  his  children  hard- 
ly twelve  years  old,  old  people  of  sixty  even  worked  for 
their  own  existence  and  for  the  keeping  of  the  animals. 
The  instruments  of  labor,  the  plow,  the  wagon,  the  har- 
rows, the  scythes,  the  axes,  etc.,  all  of  that  must  be 
bought  by  the  peasant. 


TOIL  99 

If  he  had  done  any  involuntary  damage  while  working 
for  the  pomestchik,  he  must  have  everything  repaired 
at  his  own  cost.  He  must  thrash  the  wheat  in  a  field 
far  from  all  houses,  and  it  is  there  that,  in  spite  of  the 
cold,  he  must  work  all  day  for  the  pomestchik.  Many 
worked  half  naked  and  tortured  by  hunger;  but  what 
did  it  matter,  they  had  to  work  for  the  pomestchik. 
Was  it  not  a  torture?  Add  to  that  that  those  people 
have  no  protector. 

124.  Three  days  for  yourself  and  three  days  for  the 
pomestchik;  a  year  for  yourself  and  a  year  for  the 
pomestchik;  such  is  the  life  of  the  peasant.  But  of  the 
year  during  which  he  works  for  himself  there  must  first 
be  deducted  eighty  days  that  are  holidays,  for  those 
people  are  very  religious,  then  eighty  other  days  of  rest 
caused  by  accidents  in  the  work.  And  then  the  peasant 
is  not  a  stone  that  it  may  happen  to  him  to  be  ill,  if  it 
is  only  fifty  days  in  two  years.  There  only  remains, 
then,  one  hundred  and  fifty-five  days  of  work  for  him- 
self. 

125.  I  want  to  know  whether,  in  that  case,  he  can,  in 
a  hundred  and  fifty -five  days  of  work,  supply  his  numer- 
ous needs  for  two  years,  during  the  present  year  and  the 
following  one,  during  which  he  will  work  for  the  po- 
mestchik. Remember  that  he  must  besides  scrape  to- 
gether some  money  to  pay  the  yearly  tax,  the  cost  of 
recruits  and  the  personal  assessment.  If  the  husband 
or  wife  happen  to  die,  there  remain  about  a  dozen  young 
children;  to-day  he  has  the  funeral,  and  to-morrow  he 
must  go  back  to  work  for  the  pomestchik. 

126.  Besides  that  the  pomestchik  sends  to  the  peas- 
ants for  various  things:  chickens,  geese,  eggs,  butter, 
etc.  He  notes  what  is  given  to  him  and  those  who  do 
not  give  are  tormented;  and  there  is  not  a  soul  to  whom 
they  can  complain.     Try  to   speak  to  him  of  the  com- 


luo  TOIL 

mandment.  Before  you  have  said  two  words  he  will 
interrupt  you  with  a  shower  of  arguments  and  prove  to 
you  that,  according  to  the  commandment,  he  eats  his 
bread  with  the  sweat  of  his  brow,  and  that,  on  the  con- 
trary,   the  peasants  are  idlers  and  parasites. 

There  may  be  good  pomestchiks  in  the  world,  but  I 
can  assert  that  on  the  banks  of  the  Don  they  are  all  like 
the  one  I  have  just  described. 

127.  "Is  it  allowable,"  you  will  say,  "to  insult  thus 
the  benefactors  who  feed  you,  or,  in  other  words  to  re- 
turn evil  for  good,  hatred  for  love?" 

But  how  can  you  always  praise  yourselves,  and  pro- 
claim that  no  one  is  more  just  and  merciful  than  you  are. 

128.  It  will  be  said  to  me:  "The  pomestchik  can  be 
a  virtuous  man." 

Of  course  he  can,  if  he  only  accomplishes  himself 
the  work  of  his  bread.  But  it  has  never  been  known  to 
happen,  and  never  will  be. 

In  the  eyes  of  the  real  believer,  the  principal  way  of 
redeeming  one's  sins  is  to  receive  the  holy  communion. 
But,  from  the  primitive  commandment  of  God,  the  ab- 
solution which  consists  in  doing  personally  bread 
labor  is  a  thousand  times  better.  But  the  million- 
aire has  paid  twenty  kopeks  for  a  pound  of  wheat  and  he 
has  obeyed  the  commandment! 

129.  It  has  been  said  and  is  still  said  that  the  lot  of 
the  peasant  slaves  of  the  pomestchiks  is  preferable  to 
that  of  the  peasant  of  the  state. 

That  is  simply  said  because  we  are  not  believed, 
although  there  are  thousands  of  us  and  each  one  can 
prove  the  contrary  a  thousand  times. 

But  the  pomestchik  is  alone  and  he  will  only  have  to 
say  that  the  peasants  placed  under  his  protection  are 
more  happy  than  those  of  the  state,  and  his  words  will 
be  believed. 


TOIL  loi 

130.  All  that  is  over,  slavery  is  suppressed,  but  the 
pain  which  the  sight  of  those  infamies  caused  me  has 
not  yet  disappeared  and  will  long  leave  traces  in  my 
soul. 

Up  to  the  age  of  sixty  the  peasant  worked  for  the 
pomestchik;  deduct  the  thirteen  years  of  childhood 
and  there  remain  forty-seven  years,  of  which  twenty-four 
were  devoted  to  working  for  the  pomestchik  and  the 
remaining  twenty-three  for  himself. 

Try,  now,  to  hire  a  peasant  of  the  state  and  tell  him: 
"Work  a  year  for  me  with  your  wife,  your  children  and 
your  beasts;  life,  clothes,  implements,  etc.,  everything 
will  be  at  your  own  cost;  if  you  injure  anything  while 
working  for  me,  you  will  be  held  accountable  for  it." 
For  what  price  will  that  peasant  consent  to  work  for  a 
year? 

He  will  ask  at  least  five  hundred  rubles,  which  would 
make,  for  twenty-four  years,  eleven  thousand,  five  hun- 
dred rubles. 

Such  is  the  amount  which  the  pomestchik  has  stolen, 
if  not  in  money,  at  least  in  work,  from  the  peasant  who 
has  lived  all  his  life  in  his  service. 

And  that  money,  the  pomestchik  has  lost  it  at  cards 
or  used  it  to  satisfy  various  fancies  of  the  same  kind. 

Tell  me  why  he  has  taken  that  money?  Did  the  peas- 
ant owe  it  to  him!  No.  He  might  have  had  some  rea- 
son for  acting  thus?  No,  none.  Then  why  did  he  take 
such  a  large  amount  from  him?     For  nothing. 

131.  Throughout  the  universe  complaints  are  aris- 
ing against  God.  If  God's  kmdness  is  infinite,  why  all 
the  persecution  that  is  inflicted  on  the  poor? 

If  God  governs  the  world  righteously,  whence  comes 
the  inequality  between  men?  Why  is  sin  happy  and 
virtue  unhappy? 


102  TOIL 

But  is  it  the  fault  of  the  mirror  if  our  face  is  ugly;  in 
other  words,  is  it  God's  fault  if  we  have  rejected  his 
law,  the  respect  for  which  would  re-establish  equality 
amongst  all  mortals? 

132  Impose  the  law  that  no  one  shall  eat  the  bread 
of  the  work  of  others,  unless  it  be  for  legitimate  reasons, 
and,  from  then  on,  men  will  not  be  equal,  but  they  would 
at  least  be  nearer  to  each  other.  The  work  of  the  bread 
will  clip  the  wings  of  those  who  try  to  soar  too  high. 

We  are  poor  through  your  wealth,  and  you  are  rich 
through  our  poverty. 

133.  Our  great-grandfathers,  our  grandfathers,  our 
fathers,  our  ancestors  in  a  word,  have  worked,  and  we 
also,  you  see  it,  work  until  old  age.  All  that  they  have 
earned  by  their  work  they  have  left  to  their  childrenaand 
the  latter  to  theirs. 

But  why  am  I  not  rich  then,  even  if  I  had  laid  noth- 
ing aside?  I  own  as  little  as  owned  my  great-grand- 
father, less  perhaps. 

134.  Has  our  family  been  composed  of  idlers  and 
drunkards?  "No,  never,"  said  my  grandfather.  Per- 
haps all  of  my  possessions  have  been  destroyed  by  a 
fire  or  a  flood?  No,  not  that  either.  Nothing  of  all 
that  has  happened. 

135.  But  then,  I  will  ask,  what  has  become  of  all 
of  our  work?  What  thief  has  stolen  all  of  our  fortune? 
But  where  does  all  of  your  wealth  come  from,  O  rich 
man?     Answer  me  loyally 

136.  If  only  the  injury  done  us  was  but  momentary, 
but  it  is  eternal!  Just  like  the  past  generations,  the 
present  ones  must  suffer  from  privation.  It  will  never 
have  a  protector.  But  all  of  that  happens  only  because 
we  have  nailed  up  in  his  coffin,  our  father,  the  com- 
mandment. 


TOIL  103 

137.  That  is  only  what  I  caught  a  glimpse  of  during 
all  of  my  life,  and  what  I  see  clearly  to-day,  after  hav- 
ing meditated  for  years  on  the  meaning  of  the  first 
commandment :  throughout  the  universe  the  peasantry 
go  to  the  fields  and  do  bread-labor,  helped  by  the 
youngest  of  their  children.  The  babies  who  are 
not  weaned  yet,  and  have  not  yet  tasted  the  bread,  are 
suffering  also  for  the  bread.  Would  not  the  sight  of  all 
those  people  remind  one  of  bees,  swarming  through  the 
fields  and  gathering  the  honey  on  their  way? 

And  on  seeing  the  people  of  the  high  classes,  I  have 
compared  them  to  the  drones  who  buzz,  who  do  not 
work,  and  only  know  how  to  eat  the  work  of  others. 

Many  thieves  are  arrested  in  the  world ;  they  are 
not  thieves,  but  rather  mischievous  people,  whereas  I 
have  found  a  thief,  a  true  thief!  He  has  stolen  God 
and  the  church ;  he  has  robbed  us  of  the  primitive  law, 
that  which  belonged  to  all  of  us  laborers.  But  I  want  to 
show  you  that  thief  himself.  He  who  does  not  work 
his  own  bread  and  eats  the  bread  of  the  work  of  others, 
he  is  the  thief;  arrest  him  and  judge  him.  He  has 
carefully  buried  the  commandment  of  God,  and  in  seven 
thousand  three  hundred  and  ninety  years  no  one  has 
been  able  to  discover  it.  He  has  stolen  innumerable 
millions  from  the  poor  people,  and  he  abandoned  them 
with  their  children  half  naked  and  famished,  while  he 
elevated  himself  by  that  means  higher  than  the  sky. 

138.  The  honey  bees  cut  the  wings  of  the  bumble 
bees,  to  prevent  them  from  eating  the  honey  of  their 
work.  Your  turn  has  arrived,  parasites,  and  we  cut 
your  wings  that  you  might  not  eat  the  bread  of  our 
work.  I  know  very  well  that  you  will  continue  to  eat 
it,  but  when  you  carry  the  bread  to  your  lips,  conscience 
will  clutch  your  throat  and  nothing  can  deliver  you 
from  its  grasp.     If  bread  could  be  had  by   cunning,    as 


104  TOIL 

all  else,  it  would  be  hidden  and  left  in  some  safe  place, 
and  all  would  be  for  the  best.  But  bread  can  not  be 
hidden  :  it  must  be  eaten  immediately. 

That  is  worth  thinking  of. 

139.  Now  you  of  the  rich  classes,  you  who  elevate 
yourselves  unto  the  skies,  remember  that  you  impris- 
oned yourselves  in  the  bonds  of  impiety  which  you  have 
not  the  strength  to  cast  aside,  you  see  yourselves  cast 
into  a  gulf  from  which  you  can  not  escape,  unless 
God  draws  out  of  you  the  tyrant  Laziness  and  his 
friend  Luxury. 

We  therefore  beg  that  you  restore  to  us  the  treas- 
ure which  God  created  especially  for  us,  and  which  is 
the  fundamental  law  of  humanity;  in  other  words,  de- 
clare it  everywhere.  Then  we  will  enrich  you,  we  will 
load  you  down  with  gold,  because  hoping  as  we  will  for 
salvation,  not  only  the  bread  labor,  but  every  other 
work  will  seem  easy  to  us. 

-The  most  weak-minded  men  and  the  children  them- 
selves, hearing  the  text  of  that  law,  will  understand  that 
it  is  the  first  one  given  by  God  to  the  first  men  and 
that  it  is  more  important  than  all  of  the  other  virtues, 
than  all  of  the  other  commandments.  They  will  then 
say  to  themselves :  "I  must  work  still  more  than  be- 
fore, therefore  I  will  willingly  spend  my  life  in  the  fields 
that  I  may  deserve  happiness  in  the  other  world." 

Return  to  us  then,  O  wealthy  people,  the  treasure 
which  you,  or  rather  your  ancestors,  have  stolen  and 
hidden,  restore  to  us  the  most  sacred  of  our  possessions, 
the  gift  which  we  have  from  God. 

Before  my  eyes  were  opened,  all  of  the  prescriptions, 
all  of  the  laws  transmitted  to  us  by  tradition  seemed 
important  to  me.  But  to-day  they  seem  insignificant 
because     this     single    commandment :      "Knead     your 


TOIL  105 

bread,"  etc.,  has  taken   possession   of   my  intelligence 
and  of  my  heart. 

The  result  will  be  that,  if  it  is  proclaimed,  the  clergy 
will  be  deprived  of  bread;  for  now  it  eats  without 
working,  and  no  one  has  any  right  to  blame  it  for  its 
laziness.  But  then  each  one  would  tell  the  clergy  what 
he  thought  of  it. 

141.  When  I  laid  aside  my  manuscript  after  copying 
the  preceding  article  (for  it  took  me  six  months  to  copy 
my  work  at  my  spare  moments),  they  came  to  ask  us  to 
lend  some  bread  to  the  town  of  Krasmoiarsk.  The  in- 
habitants of  our  village,  veritable  Jews,  have,  by  a  vote 
of  the  county  assembly,  granted  fifty  meaures  of  wheat 
from  the  store-house  of  the  Mir.  *  Why  did  they  give 
so  little? 

''Because  the  mare  has  eaten  all  of  the  bread."  f 
Several  people  congratulated  the  man  who  had 
taken  the  initiative  of  the  proposition,  but  many  were 
angry:  '^  Fifty  measures,  fifty  measures!  but  that  is  but 
twenty  pounds  for  each  house!  Why  give  but  twenty 
pounds  for  each  house,  they  said  to  the  assembly?  It 
would  be  better  to  give  nothing.  While  you  are  giving 
you  must  give  at  least  two  or  three  measures  to  each 
house,  or  even  two  bags. ' ' 

142.  You  see,  what  I  predicted  has  arrived.  The 
bread  must  not  be  sold,  but  in  certain  admissible  cases, 
it  must  be  given  for  nothing.  And  it  is  being  given 
while  you  are  still  hiding  the  commandment  on 
bread  labor.  But  if  that  first  commandment  was 
made  known   to  all  mankind  without  having   it's  impor- 


*  Store-house  in  which  each  family  was  called  upon  to  pour  one 
tenth  of  the  crop  for  the  poor 

f  Russian  proverb.  It  is  one  of  the  pretexts  given  for  refusing  to 
give  alms. 


io6  TOIL 

tance  hidden,  the  burned  town  of  Krasmoiarsk  would 
then  receive  from  our  single  district  of  Manoussinsk  sev- 
eral thousand  measures  ot  bread  and  each  one  would  go 
to  the  spot  to  give  the  necessary  help.  It  would  be  the 
same  in  every  case,  for  no  one  would  know  what  might 
happen  to  him  on  the  next  or  even  on  the  same  day. 

143.  Ask,  on  the  contrary,  for  money.  They  will 
give  you  none,  ist,  because  the  peasant  rarely  has  any; 
2nd,  because  the  voice  of  the  commandment  tells  the 
laborer  to  give  bread  rather  than  anything  else.  And 
then  money  is  a  dead  thing  if  it  be  compared  to  bread; 
it  is  worth  no  more  than  a  stone.  No  one  makes  pres- 
ents in  money,  the  more  money  a  person  has,  the  more 
they  wish  to  have.  Take  all  of  the  money  and  all  of  the 
treasures  of  the  world  and  give  it  to  a  single  person:  will 
he  be  satisfied  and  will  his  cupidity  vanish?  No.  But 
what  more  could  he  want?  Why  will  he  not  be  satisfied? 
He  will  cry:  <*  Why  cannot  I  hold  the  entire  world  in 
my  hands,  why  can  I  not  hear  every  man  and  embrace 
in  a  single  glance  the  entire  universe.  No  matter  which 
way  I  turn,  nothing  belongs  to  me." 

144.  But,  I  would  answer,  to  do  that  one  would  have 
to  live  a  thousand  years,  because,  however  wide  and 
long  you  may  be,  you  could  never,  in  such  a  short  time, 
absorb  it  all;  you  would  smother.  But  bread  is  exactly 
the  opposite  of  money;  they  are  two  enemies,  just  as 
the  laborer  is  the  enemy  of  the  idler. 

145.  It  is  said  that  henceforth  the  taxes  will  be  based 
upon  the  earth,  meaning  that  the  amount  will  be  propor- 
tionate to  the  number  of  acres  that  each  one  owns.  Why 
do  you  say  **  upon  the  earth?  "  Why  not  admit  immedi- 
ately that  the  laborers  will  be  the  only  ones  paying  taxes. 
But  here  is  some  ground  that  is  not  cultivated;  are  you 
going  to  take  from  that  the  money  and  bread  that  you 
need?     **  According  to  the  sentence  of  Him  who  created 


TOIL  107 

me,  that  earth  will  say  to  you,  I  am  waiting  for  some 
one  to  come  and  work  me;  if  you  come  for  aught  else, 
begone,  parasite." 

Allow  me  to  ask  you  why  you  want  taxes  from  those 
who  feed  you  with  their  bread,  while  those  who  never 
accomplish  the  work  of  the  bread  do  not  have  to  pay  a 
single  kopek?  If  at  least  the  earth  were  free!  But  the 
state  has  taken  it  from  us  to  give  it  to  the  pomestchiks, 
and  they  require  from  us  ten  times  as  much  as  it  is 
worth.  Whether  the  wheat  grows  or  not,  give  us  the 
money;  but  where  shall  we  take  it? 

Although  it  has  been  said  in  the  law:  <<Hold  out  your 
cheek  to  him  who  strikes,  in  view  of  the  great  injustices 
of  which  you  are  guilty  towards  us,  I  refuse  you  (  and 
by  I,  I  mean  all  of  our  class  of  laborers,  young  and  old, 
children  at  the  breast  and,  in  general,  all  of  those  who 
suffer  before  being  born,  since  their  mothers  work  accor- 
ding to  the  primitive  commandment  while  they  are  still 
in  their  wombs,)  I  refuse  you,  I  say,  the  right  of  speak- 
ing, of  wrangling  about  the  bread  and  about  the  earth 
that  produced  it;  be  satisfied  with  talking  of  the  stone 
and  of  the  ground  where  grows  nothing  but  the  bitter 
absinthe. 

If  you  really  wanted  to  work  and  were  not  able,  for 
various  reasons,  you  would  be  excusable;  but  it  is 
through  laziness  that  you  avoid  work.  In  that  case, 
why  should  you  be  forgiven?  I  know  that  you  can  not 
answer  all  of  these  questions.  You  say  that  you  will 
have  recourse  to  violence  to  procure  your  food.  But 
will  you  be  able  to  live,  could  you  swallow  -a  single 
mouthful  of  the  bread  you  owed  to  your  strength?  No, 
no,  that  mouthful  would  smother  you,  body  and 
soul,  without  paying  any  attention  to  your   rank. 

Have  pity  on  us;  since  how  many  thousands  of  years 
have  you  been  galloping  on  our  backs  like  a  horse!  Look: 


io8  TOIL 

long  since  j^ou  have  taken  all  of  the  flesh  from  the  bone. 
The  bread  you  eat  is   in   reality   our   body;  and   the 
wine  you  drink  is  in  reality  our  blood. 

146.  When  I  understood  the  first  commandment, 
here  is  what  I  did :  in  spite  of  my  sixty-five  years,  in 
spite  of  my  weakness  and  my  thin  arms,  I  worked  the 
earth  during  the  whole  year  (1881).  Without  any  help 
I  harrowed  eight  acres  of  fallow-land ;  I  led  the  first 
horse  of  the  plow ;  I  worked  the  same  earth  over  again 
and,  though  working  in  the  fields  all  day,  I  took  care  of 
the  horses  at  night.  And  in  spite  of  all  that  I  felt  no 
fatigue.  Lastly  I  brought  in  the  wheat  and  the  hay 
with  my  son  and  my  daughter-in-law. 

147.  You  see  the  result  which  that  commandment  can 
produce.  Thanks  to  that  law  the  old  man  becomes 
young,  the  weak  is  strong,  the  lazy  diligent,  the  drunk- 
ard sober  and  the  poor  rich.  Would  I  have  done  all 
that,  would  I  have  plowed  so  much  earth,  had  I  not 
known  that  I  was  digging  up  the  spot  where  you  hid 
the  divine  commandment?  If  people  were  aware  of 
their  own  strength  they  would  not  stand  such  outrages. 
Would  not  man  cast  from  him  the  horrible  poverty  that 
holds  him  now  in  its  grasp? 

148.  If  God  sends  an  abundant  crop  to  the  eight 
acres  of  land  which  I  plowed,  we  will  have  enough  to 
satisfy  us,  my  family  and  myself.  Listen  to  this  more, 
idle  men,  that  I  could  still  feed  thirty  men  with  the  re- 
sult of  my  work. 

149.  If  you  reallj.  wanted  to  work  and  were  not  able 
to  for  good  reasons,  you  would  be  excusable  before 
God  and  before  man ;  but  it  is  through  laziness  that 
you  do  not  work:  is  it  then  possible  to  respect  you? 
Never  in  any  way.  Before  that  a  superior  appeared  to 
me  a  great  personage,  but  now  he   is   in   my   eyes   the 


TOIL  log 

least  of  men;  I  would  like  to  put  that  idea  from  me, 
but  I  cannot,  it  returns  in  spite  of  me. 

I  often  hear  that  it  is  wished  to  reconcile  all  of  hu- 
manity in  a  single  religion.  Is  it  so?  I  know  not. 
But  if  it  be  true,  I  assert  that  instead  of  uniting  them, 
it  will  divide  them  into  as  many  different  sects  as  to- 
day, and  consequently  your  action  would  be  more  injur- 
ious than  beneficial.  It  was  easy  to  unite  men  in  an- 
cient times,  while  the  race  was  still  wild ;  it  could  be 
led  by  a  thread  without  fear  of  breaking  it.  But  now- 
adays you  might  tie  them  together  with  a  triple  cord, 
you  would  not  move  them,  in  the  first  place  on  ac- 
count of  their  habits,  and  also  on  account  of  the  pride 
that  prevents  them  from  listening  to  each  other. 

But  if  you  start  a  religion  on  the  basis  of  the  single 
primitive  law,  without  giving  any  other  rules,  you  will 
soon  have  the  universe  united.  It  is  impossible  to  reach 
by  any  other  means  the  union  of  which  you  dream. 

150.  From  poverty  to  wealth  there  is  but  one  step, 
and,  the  other  way,  the  distance  is  still  smaller.  It  is 
the  same  from  the  general  to  the  soldier.  Man  does 
not  know  when  and  where  his  chariot  will  upset;  in 
other  words,  it  may  happen  that  to-day  he  owns  a  mil- 
lion and  that  to-morrow  he  is  as  poor  as  we,  that  to- 
day he  is  a  general  and  to-morrow  our  equal. 

151.  This  is  then  the  line  of  conduct  we  must  adopt. 
Hasten  to  teach  the  child,   however  noble    its   family 

may  be,  the  first  commandment.  When  he  has  grown, 
teach  him  by  your  example  bread  labor.  After  that 
if  misfortune  ever  falls  to  his  lot,  he  will  not  even  sigh, 
he  will  rush  impetuously  towards  bread  labor. 

"For  many  years,"  he  will  cry,  "I  have  wished  to 
busy  myself  with  this  work,  but  I  had  not  the  strength 
to  withstand  fortune.  To-day  I  thank  God  for  having 
withdrawn  from  me  the  heavy  weight  that  was  dragging 


110  TOIL 

me  down  into  the  abyss  of  sin."  Turning  up  his 
sleeves  and  the  tail  of  his  coat,  he  will  take  the  plow 
with  which  he  is  familiar  and  sing  as  he  goes  to  work. 

152.  But  what  do  we  see  now?  When  fortune 
abandons  man  and  need  obliges  him  to  earn  his  living 
with  his  own  hands,  he  grows  discouraged,  and  not 
only  he  dishonors  himself,  but  he  draws  misfortune 
onto  all  of  mankind.  Whose  fault  is  it?  Yours,  be- 
cause you  have  hidden  and  are  hiding  yet  the  divine 
commandment.  The  government,  not  the  individuals, 
should  be  sentenced  to  the  penitentiary.  Why  so?  they 
ask.  Because  you  should  not  hide  the  law  of  God.  Let 
the  responsibility  of  the  crime  fall  onto  the  clergy  and 
the  Jewish  Rabbi,  but  do  not  blame  the  civil  and  mil- 
itary authority,  for  it  is  not  in  the  least  guilty ! 

153.  You  see  it  now,  reader;  all  of  your  books  are 
insignificant  by  the  side  of  mine.  Your  eloquent  excuses 
are  empty  by  the  side  of  this  simple  language.  All  of 
your  precious  works,  which  you  pay  each  other  so  gener- 
ously for,  are  ignorant  by  the  side  of  our  work.  The 
treasures  that  fill  your  houses  have  no  value  compared 
to  the  bread  which  we  have  in  our  lofts.  All  of  your 
broad  intelligence  is  weak  by  the  side  of  our  small 
mind.  Your  millions  are  nothing  but  horrible  poverty 
by  the  side  of  our  small  possessions. 

154.  During  entire  centuries  people  have  ts^ked  of 
the  rich  and  of  the  poor;  but  no  one  ever  found  the  dif- 
ference between  those  two  classes  of  men,  because  one 
owns  a  small  capital,  another  a  capital  twice  as  large,  a 
third  a  capital  three  times  as  large,  etc. ;  and  each  one 
pointed  to  the  other.  ''Do  you  take  me  for  a  rich  man? 
Look  at  so  and  so,  there  is  a  man  who  is  rich." 

It  is  exactly  of  such  rich  men  as  those  that  Jesus 
Christ  said:  *'  It  is  easier  for  a  camel  to  pass  through  the 
eye  of  a  needle,  than  for  a  rich    man  to   enter  into    the 


TOIL  III 

kingdom  of  God."     (S.  Mark,  X,    25.) 

But  I  have  seen  that  there  is  between  the  rich  and  the 
poor  the  same  distance  that  there  is  between  heaven  and 
earth,  between  east  and  west.  Between  us  and  you 
there  is,  it  is  said,  an  immense  gulf:  we  can  not  go  to 
you;  you  can  not  come  to  us.     Js  it  not  so? 

155.  If,  for  instance,  I  should  give  to  a  rich  or  to  a 
learned  man  the  following  advice:  *'You  see  that  on 
your  side  there  is  nothing  but  vileness;  come  to  ours. 
Do  tiot  work  the  bread  since  you  have  never  done  it; 
but  the  single  fact  that  you  come  to  us  will  spare  you 
the  intolerable  stinging  of  your  conscience."  *'I  can 
not  do  it,"  he  would  answer,  *'  I  would  rather  die  than 
join  you. " 

156  Would  it  not  be  the  same  on  the  day  of  the 
judgment,  as  the  Scriptures  assert  it?  In  His  mercy 
God  will  receive  you;  but  in  your  shame  you  will  move 
away  from  Him.  But  still  God  will  not  move  away  from 
you  because  you  disdained  the  work  of  the 
bread  which  he  prescribed  for  you,  and  which  you  have 
trampled  under  foot  as  well  as  those  who  observed  it. 

157.  Your  reign  has  lasted  for  7,382  years  while  we 
were  oblige  to  work.  In  1882  will  begin  our  reign  and 
your  period  of  work,  if  this  commandment  is  understood 
by  every  peasant.  What  a  triumph,  what  a  joy  it  will 
be  for  this,  the  lower  class! 

158.  If  you  have  then  a  chance  to  spend  a  few  days 
in  the  country,  you  would  have  to  borrow  the  eyes  of  an 
animal,  for  with  the  eyes  of  a  man,  you  could  not  remain. 
As  we  will  be  elevated,  so  will  you  be  lowered.  No  one 
however  will  blame  you  openly;  you  will  be  fed,  but  the 
blame  that  will  arise  behind  you  will  touch  you  more  bit- 
terly than  if  it  was  spoken  to  your  face. 

159.  If  you  earned  your  bread  by  working  with  your 
hands,  and  not  with  money,  your  reign  would  be  still 


iia  TOIL 

more  bright.  We  are  now  your  inferiors.  We  would  be 
still  lower  then  for  we  work  by  constraint,  urged  on  by 
need,  whereas  you  would  work  simply  to  obey  the  first 
commandment.  You  would  deserve  more  respect  than 
ever. 

1 60.  You  are  now  occupying  our  seat  at  table,  in 
spite  of  us;  and  we  remain  so  humbly  before  you  that 
your  conscience  suffers  as  well  as  ours.  But  then  the 
real  justice  would  arise  triumphant:,  it  will  spare  you,  but 
it  will  not  injure  us.  You  will  not  always  have  the  "seat 
of  honor  and  we  will  not  remain  eternally  at  the  end  of 
the  table.  • 

161.  The  lazy  say  to  me:  <'If  you  had  found  a  way 
of  being  rich  and  happy  without  working  every  one 
would  have  thanked  you.  But  when  you  advise  us  to 
undertake  an  irksome  and  humiliating  work,  who  will 
take  any  notice  of  your  words?  You  wish  to  convince 
the  government  that  the  primitive  law  is  based  on 
bread  labor.  But  many  very  learned  people  can 
see  in  the  law  but  a  message  that  is  far  from  plain.  And 
then  must  we  trouble  ourselves  about  the  bread?  What 
is  the  use  of  writing  on  a  subject  that  is  not  worth  while? 
What  is  the  use  of  even  speaking  of  it,  since  we  can 
have  bread  at  the  rate  of  twenty  or  thirty  kopeks  a 
measure? 

"Lastly  if  that  work  was  going  to  lead  us  to  salvation 
all  of  the  learned  and  especially  the  clergy,  would  has- 
ten to  accomplish  it.  But  they  disdain  it  and  prefer  an 
easy  life:  it  must  be  then  that  it  contains  nothing  that 
can  contribute  to  our  salvation.  What  you  are  saying 
is  but  a  fairy  tale." 

162.  The  principal  curse  of  our  class,  that  of  the  la- 
borers, that  which  casts  us  in  spite  of  ourselves  into  mis- 
ery, abjection  and  various  other  misfortunes,  is,  it  will 
be  said,  the  division  of  wealth  between   brothers.     It   is 


TOIL  113 

impossible  to  speak  of  that  evil  in  two  words.  The 
cause  of  that  is  still  the  same:  the  world  has  been  kept 
ignorant  of  the  law  of  work.  If  that  law  had  been  pub- 
lished, a  hundred  men  could  live  together.  The  one 
who  commands  would  have  no  occasion  to  be  proud,  and 
the  ones  who  obey  could  not  be  offended.  If,  in  the 
midst  of  that  group,  a  father  otjsi  mouther  happened  to 
die,  the  children -would  remain  in  that  surrounding  full 
of  cordiality  and  harmony,  and  the  shock  would  not  be 
so  hard  for  the  one  who  was  bereaved.  The  orphans 
would  find  there  mothers  and  fathers,  brothers  and  sis- 
ters, in  a  word,  a  host  of  protectors. 

Women  are  generally  tender-hearted:  they  would  take 
care  of  the  orphans  in  preference  to  their  own  children. 
In  a  word,  every  virtue  results  from  that  law  and  it  is 
opposed  to  all  vices.  It  is  not  in  vain  that  God  said  in 
creating  the  world:  '' Let  light  be,  since  it  is  good."* 
You  have  hidden  that  gift  of  God  from  the  sight  of  man> 
and  you  were  whispering  to  each  other:  ''There  are  fools 
who  feed  us  well,  give  us  fine  clothes,  and  all  that  for 
nothing.     We  give  them  orders  and  they  obey  us." 

163.  If  a  man  speaks  of  a  crime  before  a  numerous 
society,  he  names  no  one  as  being  the  author  of  it,  for  he 
can  not  read  in  the  consciences:  he  speaks  of  the  crime 
in  a  legal  way  and  wounds  no  one.  But  if  we  explain 
the  primitive  law:  ''Knead  your  bread  with  the  sweat  of 
your  brow;"  we  can  not  hide  the  name  of  the  criminal, 
for  he  carries  on  himself,  so  to  say,  the  brand  of  Cain. 

To  disobey  that  commandment  is,  in  truth,  the  greatest 
of  crimes,  and,  if  it  was  committed  by  a  man  of  the  lower 
class,  it  might  not  be  noticed;  but  as  the  commandment 


*  Allusion  to  the  text  of  Genesis:   "God  created  the  sun,  God  put 
the  stars  in  the  firmament  to  give  light  to  the  earth — and  god  saw 

THAT  THAT  WAS   GOOD," 
Toil— 8 


114  TOIL 

speaks  to  those  who  elevate  themselves  unto  the  sky, 
everyone  notices  those  who  break  it. 

164.  God  gave  two  commandments  to  our  ancestors 
Adam  and  Eve,  the  first :  "Grow  and  multiply,  fill  the 
earth;"  the  second:  "With  the  sweat  of  your  brow, 
knead  your  bread."  Why,  I  will  ask  of  you  first  of 
all,  do  you  hasten  to  execute  the  first  commandment  of 
God  with  such  eagerness  and  gluttony,  that  you  try 
even  to  multiply  the  race  of  your  neighbor?  Why,  I 
will  ask  you  next,  do  you  disdain  the  second  command- 
ment of  God :  "With  the  sweat  of  your  brow,  knead 
your  bread,"  and  do  you  hide  in  different  corners,  say- 
ing :  "I  will  take  a  good  workman  and  he  will  make  my 
bread. " 

Then  you  should  take  a  good  workman  to  make  your 
children. 

"But  that  is  inadmissible,"  you  will  answer. 

If  that  is  inadmissible,  then  it  is  also  inadmissible  to 
oblige  others  to  make  your  bread,  except  in  certain  ex- 
cusable cases.  Tell  me  why  you. do  not  disdain  the  first 
commandment  as  much  as  you  disdain  the  second.  If 
your  wives  had  heard  your  words  they  would  have  said: 
"We  are  fulfilling  our  commandment :  our  children  give 
us  pain  and  sometimes  death ;  and  you,  why  do  you 
avoid  executing  the  commandment  that  concerns  you? 
Give  to  your  children  the  bread  of  your  work."* 
You  can  answer  nothing  to  that,  and  you  will  remain 
like  a  fish  on  the  sand. 


*  Compare  these  remarks  of  Bondareff  to  what  Tolstoi  exposes  in 
the  admirable  chapter,  "To  Women,"  which  ends  "What  Must  Be 
Done. " 

That  woman  who  willfully  became  sterile  and  who  seduces  man  by 
the  beauty  of  her  shoulders  and  hair,  that  one  is  the  woman  perverted 
by  man,  the  woman  who  lowered  herself  unto  him,  unto  the  perverted 


TOIL  115 

165.  How  blind  you  are,  O,  savant !  You  pore  over 
the  holy  Scripture,  and  you  do  not  see  the  means  by 
which  you  could  unburden  of  the  weight  of  sin  both 
yourself  and  the  flock  which  God  entrusted  to  you.  You 
do  not  see  the  road  that  would  lead  you  directly  to 
eternal  life.  Your  blindness  is  like  that  of  the  inhabi- 
tants of  Sodoma  who  were  blinded  while  looking  for  the 
door  of  Loth-t 

But  those  have  had  their  blindness,  while  you,  al- 
though blind,  you  think  that  you  see  everything  clearly 
and  plainly,  that  you  know  everything  without  the  help 
of  any  master,  and  that  no  one  has  the  right  to  advise 
you.  Your  blindness  is  like  that  of  Balaam  who,  from 
the  donkey  on  which  he  was  perched,  did  not  see  the 
angel  of  God  armed  with  a  sword  of  fire,  standing  on 
the  road  before  him,  while  the  donkey  he  was  riding 
saw.  It  is  I  who  am  the  donkey,  and  you  are  Balaam ; 
and  you  have  been  riding  me  since  my  childhood. 


man,  who  like  him,  ignores  the  law,  and  who,  like  him,  has  become 
blind  unto  the  right  meaning  of  life. 

From  that  fault  results  the  wonderful  foolishness  that  is  called 
the  right  of  women.     Here  is  the  formula  of  that  right  of  women: 

"Ah!  you,  man,"  said  the  woman,  "you  have  ignored  your  real 
work  and  you  wish  that  we  should  carry  the  entire  weight  of  our  work. 
But  no!  Since  such  is  the  case,  we  also,  like  you,  can  do  that  supposed 
work  which  you  accomplish  in  banquets,  in  public  offices,  in  universi- 
ties and  academies;  we  wish  also,  like  you,  under  the  pretext  of  divi- 
sion of  the  work,  to  encroach  upon  that  of  others  and  live  only  for 
the  satisfaction  of  our  coquetry." 

f  Allusion  to  the  Genesis,  xixtio.  "And  they  followed  that 
man  Loth,  with  violence,  and  went  up  to  the  door  to  break  it  in. 
Then  those  men  held  their  hands  out  and  they  drew  Loth  in  af- 
ter them,  then  they  closed  the  door.  As  to  the  people  who  were  out- 
side, they  struck  them  with  blindness,  all  of  them,  large  and  small, 
^nd  they  tired  themselves  without  finding  the  door." 


1x6  TOIL 

1 66.  From  all  that  precedes,  one  can  see  plainly,  as 
in  a  mirror,  that  man  learns  to  read  in  order  to  do, 
not  the  good,  but  the  evil.  It  is  not  without  reason 
that  the  proverb  says:  "If  the  learned  people  should 
lose  their  eyes"  (and  I  Bondareff,  probably,  like  them, ) 
and  if  their  horses  died,  the  world  would  but  live  the 
better. " 

I  did  not  use  to  believe  in  proverbs,  but  now  I  see 
that  it  is  God  who  gave  them  to  the  world. 

167.  The  world  is  divided  up  between  a  thousand 
religions,  while  there  should  be  but  one  belief,  as  there 
is  but  one  God. 

The  first. commandment :  "With  the  sweat  of  your 
brow,  knead  your  bread"  can  unite  all  religions  into 
one.  When  man  has  understood  the  full  strength  of 
that  commandment,  he  will  press  it  to  his  heart,  and, 
in  a  century  or  less  perhaps,  he  will  unite  the  world 
from  east  to  west,  from  north  to  south,  in  a  single 
belief,  a  single  church  and  a    single    love.   (See  article 

35-) 

168.  Why  do  you  look  at  the  people  who  avoid  work 
not  only  without  friendliness,  but  almost  with  hatred, 
I  have  been  asked?  Whatever  you  may  have  on  your 
heart,  you  should  still  speak  gently  and  kindly. 

Here  is  my  answer :  Where  could  one  find  enough 
patience  and  hypocrisy  to  speak  gently  and  kindly?  How 
many  millions  of  people  are  there,  how  many  have 
been  since  the  beginning  of  the  world,  and  how  many 
will  there  be  yet  who  have  been,  who  are,  who  will  be 
ignominiously  wronged  by  you,  the  masters  of  this 
world?  In  such  conditions,  I  do  not  say  a  man,  but 
even  an  angel  could  not  stand  such  insults,  it  would 
make  hair  raise  on  his  head.  And  I  who  am  only  a 
man,  I  have  wrongly  endured  them.  Time  and  again  I 
have  wished  to  speak  gently,  but  when  I  begin  to  write 


TOIL  117 

I  grow  so  indignant  that  I  forget  all  of  my  resolutions. 
And  I  have  said  to  myself  that  one  can  die  but  once. 
That  is  why  I  took  the  right  road  and  I  have  now 
started. 

*  169.  I  am  speaking  to  you,  the  upper  classes.  I 
do  not  beg  of  you,  I  do  not  ask,  but  I  order  that  you 
should  give  us  back  what  is  ours,  that  you  should  teach 
us  the  primitive  law  which  God  himself  gave  us,  the 
laborers,  when  he  created  heaven  and  earth.  You  took 
it  from  us  either  by  cunning  or  by  violence,  and  you 
have  hidden  it  in  the  depths  of  the  earth,  like  the  lazy 
slave  of  the  Gospel  who  hides  his  coin  in  a  deep  hole. 
Return  it  to  us  now  without  delay,  give  it  back  to  us ! 
^  We  will  no  longer  accept  an  excuse. 

Those  who  preceded  you  were  right  in  keeping  that 
law  about  them,  since  they  were  not  asked  for  it :  stran- 
gers have  nothing  to  do  with  other  people's  goods.  But 
now  give  us  back  that  law,  or,  in  other  words,  explain 
it  to  us ! 

170.  You  all  give  us  the  same  excuse.  It  is  not  I 
who  am  guilty,  says  one;  nor  I,  says  another;  nor  I, 
says  the  third,  and  there  is  no  end  to  the  not  I,  but 
who  then  will  say :  It  is  I  who  am  guilty?  If  one 
speaks  to  the  supreme  chiefs  of  the  state,  they  will  say 
also :  We  are  not  the  guilty  ones.  In  a  word  the  uni- 
verse has  suddenly  become  a  circle  in  which  no  one  is 
on  the  circumference  and  everybody  is  in  the  center. 
Question  this  one  or  that  one,  they  will  all  answer  invar- 
iably :     I  am  not  guilty. 

If  it  was  a  question  of  being  proud  and  elevating 
one's  self  unto  the  sky,  of  riding  on  the  backs  of  the 
poor  people,  you  would  all  cry  out :  I !  I !  But  it  is  to 
hold  out  your  hand  to  the  millions  of  people  who  are 
dying  in  misery ;  not  I !  you  say  immediately.  Who 
then  will  answer  to  my  question :     I !  I !  If  our  emper- 


TOIL 

or  Alexander  Nicolaievitch  has  delivered  us  from  slav- 
ery, it  has,  according  to  my  view,  nothing  to  do  with 
what  we  are  speaking  of :  it  is  another  matter. 

171.  It  is  evidently  necessary  to  convince  people  by 
good  advice  and  by  various  other  warnings,  but  never 
by  strength.  To  print  that  ad  vice  in  the  alphabets  and 
prayer  books,  to  bring  the  clergy  of  all  nations  and  all 
religions,  by  gentle  ways  and  not  by  violence,  to  bring 
them  to  preachthat  doctrine,  to  be  continually  remind- 
ing their  flock  of  the  qualities  that  are  vested,  before 
God  and  before  man,  in  him  who  adheres  carefully  to 
ijhe  primitive  law  of  God,  of  the  faults  that  characterize 
on  the  contrary  him  who  avoids  the  execution  of  that 
commandment :  Such  are  the  ways  by  which,  I  believe, 
we  should  oblige  men  to  work,  but  not  by  violence. 

But,  unless  it  be  the  government,  who  has  the  power 
to  do  what  I  have  said?     Nobody. 

172.  If  that  advice  was  inserted  in  every  daily  and 
monthly  paper,  and  in  other  publications,  under  differ- 
ent shapes,  we  might  wait  as  many  thousands  of  years 
as  there  are  days  in  a  century,  it  would  give  no  result. 
(See  art.  36.) 

173.  Implore,  O,  my  soul,  (and  by  my  soul  I  mean 
the  souls  of  all  of  the  laborers, )  implore  the  government 
as  much  as  you  wish,  shed  as  many  tears  as  you  can, 
raise  your  voice  to  its  highest  pitch,  bend  your  knees 
as  much  as  you  wish,  not  a  soul  will  be  moved  by  your 
prayers,  no  one  will  notice  your  tears.  I  am  certain 
now  that  my  double  demand  remains  useless.  If  I  had 
but  been  answered  yes  or  no,  I  would  have  been  satis- 
fied, but  not  a  word  has  been  said  !* 

O,  Eternal  Father,  deign  to  glance  down  upon  the 
earth ! 

*  Compare  these  reflections  of  Bondareff  to  those  of  the  celebrated 
sectarian  Soutaief.     "If  the  Czar  knew!  "  says  Soutaief  with  a  host  of 


TOIL  iiQ 

See  !  there  is  but  one    man  who,  with  a  single  word, 
can  oppress  millions  of  men  !f 

others.     One  day  he  starts  for  Petersburg;    he  wishes  to  warn  the 
Czar.  *  Useless  trouble;  he  is  not  allowed  to  approach.     The  unfor- 
tunate reformer  obliged  to  return  to  his  village  accusing  himself  of 
having  sinned  through  lack  of  perseverance, 
f  Probably  an  allusion  to  the  czar. 


APPENDICES 


m 


APPENDICES 

To  THE  WORK  OF   BONDAREFF 

TOIL  AND  LOVE— WILL  OF  BONDAREFF 


The  love  of  our  brothers,  that  is  the  principle  of 
the  commandments,  the  commandment  of  command- 
ments, the  law  of  laws,  the  virtue  of  virtues.  There  is 
no  virtue  that  is  like  it  either  in  heaven  or  on  earth. 
No  other  has  the  hundredth  part  of  its  perfection ;  and 
in  speaking  thus,  I  have  not  the  slightest  intention  of 
violating  the  laws  and  commandments  that  exist :  I 
simply  wish  to  appreciate  love  at  its  true  wort 


124  TOIL 


II 


And  now,  I  ask  you,  which  is  the  most  useful  to  man 
and  the  most  agreeable  to  God,  work  or  love?  It  is 
evidently  work.  But  there  is  only  one  work  more  use- 
ful than  love,  it  is  that  which  is  accomplished  accord- 
ing to  the  commandment :  "With  the  sweat  of  your 
brow,  knead  your  bread.  '  That  is  the  only  work  that 
is  more  useful  and  more  agreeable  to  God  than  love. 
Outside  of  that  one,  all  of  the  others  are  useless  and 
sometimes  even  injurious. 


Ill 


But  it  has  never  happened  to  any  one  to  work  on  ac- 
count of  that  law,  or  that  commandment,  I  mean  by 
that  not  to  satisfy  the  need  of  food,  but  to  obey  the' 
law  (for  that  is  howl,  Bondareff,  explain  the  expression 
of  the  Genesis;)  therefore  no  one  knows  the  joys  that 
result  from    that  work,  and,  consequently,  not  one  of 


TOIL  125 


yoUj  O  my  readers,  can  ratify  my  assertion  when  I  say 
that  work  is  more  useful  to  mankind  than  love. 


IV 


Here  is  the  proof :  I  find  continually,  and  in  all 
books,  songs  of  praise  in  the  honor  of  brotherly  love. 
It  is  praised  by  every  nation,  even  by  the  savages 
themselves,  in  every  language  and  in  every  dialect.  It 
is  honored  in  the  proverbs  and  the  sayings;  it  is  made 
the  basis  of  every  religion  and  civil  law.  The  preach- 
ers are  tired  of  singing  the  praise  of  love.  But,  I  ask 
you,  have  those  sermons  and  praises  had  any  result, 
given  rise  to  any  virtuous  actions?  Not  in  the  least. 
It  is  not  solely  with  love  that  you  can  quench  the  thirst 
of  him  who  is  thirsty,  clothe  the  poor,  give  alms  to  the 
beggars,  help  the    widows   and  the  orphans,  etc.,  etc. 


If  only  people  helped  each  other ;  if  they  took  pity 
on  the  misfortunes  of  others ;  but  no,  they  steal,  they 
kill,  they   burn,  they    destroy,  they    deceive,  hate   and 


126  TOIL 

wish  each  other  every  possible  misfortune;  they  lay 
traps  and  plan  ambushes,  and,  all  told,  if  they  did  not 
fear  the  authority,  and  there  was  in  the  world  nothing 
but  sermons,  the  men  would  eat  each  other  alive.  Such 
are  the  actions  given  rise  to  by  that  praise,  those  ser- 
mons on  love,  and  if  a  man  happens  to  do  the  good  to 
his  brother,  it  is  due  to  the  instinct  that  binds  us  to- 
gether and  not  to  love. 


VI 


Why  is  brotherly  love  not  appreciated?  My  answer 
will  be  short :  in  the  first  place,  love  is  an  excellent 
virtue,  but  it  is  narrow,  and,  besides  that,  real  work 
contains  love,  while  love  does  not  imply  work.  We 
can  add  that  work  was  created  by  God  in  the  Paradise, 
while  love  came  into  this  world  four  thousand  years 
later  with  Moses.  It  is  now  evident  why  work  is  the 
first  of  all  virtues  and  the  basis  of  every  law.  Love 
without  work  is  like  a  man  without  a  head,  it  is  dead, 
and  is  therefore  a  narrow  (derivated)  virtue. 


VII 


To  prove  still  better  what  I  assert,  I   propose  to  you 
to  make  the  following  trial :  suppress,    cross   out  all  of 


TOIL  127 

the  texts  of  the  holy  Scripture  that  rest  on  brotherly 
love  and  put  in  their  stead  the  explanation  of  this  law : 
"With  the  sweat  of  your  brow,  knead  your  bread, "  and 
do  not  speak  of  love.  Spread  around  those  modified 
texts,  and  soon,  before  the  end  of  the  day,  men  will  all 
be  induced  in  spite  of  themselves,  to  love  their  broth- 
ers. It  is  in  the  bread  and  in  the  field  work  that  we 
must  look  for  brotherly  love.  And  the  laborer  must  en- 
deavor to  show  the  strength  of  that  law,  otherwise  he 
is  lazy.  Idleness,  luxury,  such  are,  on  the  contrary,  the 
principle  enemies  of  social  love.  But  you  who  have 
never  worked,  you  have  never  tasted  the  delights  which 
are  given  by  the  accomplishment  of  the  law  and  of  the 
work  which  it  demands ;  that  is  why  not  one  of  you 
will  believe  my  words.  But  it  is  my  duty  to  say  them. 
It  rests  with  you  to  believe  or  discard  them. 


VIII 


Therefore  I  request  of  you,  readers,  remember  these 
words  and  imbed  them  in  your  heart :  the  work  done 
according  to  the  primitive  law  is  the  necessary  accom- 
paniment of  brotherly  love.  Work  is  strong  without 
the  help  of  love ;  it  can,  unaided,  give  man  the  highest 
prize  he  can  aspire  to  before  God,  while  love  without 
the  help  of  work  is  not  able  to,  because,  as  we  have 
said  before,  true  love,  deprived  of  all  hypocritical  veil, 
is  hidden  in  work,  but  without  work  love  is  dead. 
Love  your   brothers,  respect    them,  you  say  to  us,  but 


I2S  TOIL 

before  that,  O  you  who  preach  love,  are  you  not  eating 
the  bread  of  his  work?  Once  more,  the  preachers  have 
exhausted  their  strength,  dried  their  throats,  tired  their 
tongues  in  preaching  love,  and  what  result  have  they 
drawn  from  it?     Love   exists   nowhere. 


IX 


If  love  reigned  in  the  world,  would  the  actual  state 
of  things  exist?  In  creating  heaven  and  earth,  God  gave 
for  the  eternity  to  us,  the  laborers,  and  not  to  the  lazy 
who  have  white  hands,  an  inviolable  law,  expressed  as 
follows :  "With  the  sweat  of  your  brow,  knead  your 
bread."  In  that  law  God  included  both  temporal  and 
eternal  happiness. 

Since  the  beginning  of  the  centuries  the  supreme  mas- 
ters of  the  laws  have  taken  away  from  us,  either  by 
violence  or  by  cunning,  that  precious  treasure.  After 
having  robbed  us  of  it,  they  probably  hid  it  deep  in  the 
earth,  like  the  lazy  slave  of  the  Gospel,  who  buried  his 
coin.  During  centuries  we  laborers  did  not  notice  our 
loss.  In  the  midst  of  the  innumerable  cares  of  life  we 
forgot  it  and  it  is  only  to-day  that  we  think  of  it.  The 
thief  is  now  discovered ;  we  have  found  the  guilty  one 
and  unveiled  his  crimes  before  the  eyes  of  the  universe. 
But  what,  you  will  say  to  me.  Give  back  the  treasure 
which  God  gave  you.  No,  I  will  not.  The  prey  which 
the  wolf  hides  between  his  teeth,  says  the  proverb,  it  is 
George   who   gave   it    to    him.       What  !     You    preach 


TOIL  129 


brotherly    love    in  every  key,    and    you  commit    such 
crimes !     Why  is   it  ?  My  question  deserves  an  answer. 


If  love  reigned  in  the  world,  would  2,400,0000!  men 
have  been  placed  under  the  authority  of  the  lords,  as 
it  could  be  seen  in  our  country  not  long  ago?  If  love 
reigned  in  the  world,  would  the  rich  always  receive  a 
fertile  soil,  while  men  and  even  children  are  every  day 
in  danger  of  death,  through  lack  of  food?  But  the 
lords,  masters  of  the  soil  which  they  have  appropriated 
since  the  creation  of  the  world  (that  is  the  origin  of  the 
word  "property,)"  sell  it  to  others  at  a  very  high  price, 
then  gamble  with  the  money  or  spend  it  on  I  know  not 
what  fancies.     That  shows  how  deep  is  brotherly  love. 


XI 


On  the  sixth  day  God  said :  "See,  I  give  you  all  of 
the  plants  bearing  seed  :  feed  yourself  and  sow. "  Most 
men  do  not  wish  to  submit  to  that  commandment,  they 
refuse  to    sow,  and    load  that   irksome  work  onto   the 


I30  TOIL 

back  of  the  defenseless  poor  :  as  to  themselves,  they  walk 
around  folding  their  arms  and  whistling.  If  at  least 
they  had  give  him  but  the  work  of  the  bread  alone; 
but  they  loaded  onto  him  every  irksome  toil,  and  he 
even  pays  to  accomplish  it !  I  am  not  speaking  of  the 
taxes,  but  of  the  contributions  of  all  kinds  which  he  has 
to  make.  That  is  what  they  impose  upon  us  in  the 
name  of  the  law.  Not  satisfied  with  those  wrongs, 
which  they  have  inflicted  upon  us,  they  were  careful 
to  take  the  soil  away  from  him.  They  have  made  an 
eternal  deposit  of  it  in  the  hands  of  those  who  avoid 
work,  and  call  by  the  name  of  "their  property"  the 
soil  which  they  never  plowed 

Such  is  the  brotherly  love  which   you   advise   but  do 
not  practice. 


XII 


Time  and  again  I  have  resolved  to  show  you  more 
affection  in  my  words ;  but  when  I  notice  your  false- 
ness, I  forget  all  of  my  oaths. 

It  is  easy  to  remark  between  the  primitive  law  of 
work  and  the  civil  and  religious  laws  the  eternal  enmity 
that  exists  between  the  serpent  and  the  woman.  Even 
between  the  two  classes  of  men,  the  laborers  on  one  side 
and  those  who  avoid  work  on  the  other,  here  exists  an 
enmity  created  by  God  himself  and  not  by  man.  It  is 
said  that  between  the  primitive  law  and  the  posterior 
ones  there  is  this  difference  that  the  primitive  law  was 


TOIL  131 

given  by  God  to  man  as  an  atonement  for  his  sins; 
and  each  one  knows  that  God  did  not  give  us  other 
merits  or  other  virtues  to  redeem  our  sins.  But,  if  it 
is  thus,  why  is  work  not  prescribed  by  the  laws  or  the 
traditions  as  indispensable  for  the  salvation?  That 
would  nearly  give  us  the  thought  that  that  decision  of 
God  is  not  just.  That  is  why  I  said  that  there  was  en- 
mity between  those  two  kinds  of  laws.  And,  besides 
that,  millions  of  laborers  have  lived  between  Adam's 
time  and  our  epoch ;  has  there  not  been  amongst  us  a 
single  virtuous  man,  agreeable  to  God? 

The  question  is  important.  But  instead  of  resolving 
it,  the  writers,  more  competent  than  we  are^  speak  of 
the  progress  of  work  and  of  laziness  without  naming  any 
one.  It  is  thus  that  they  have  neglected,  and  always 
will  neglect,  until  the  end  of  centuries,  to  speak  of  the 
question  of  work  and  laziness. 


XIII 


Here  is  another  argument  that  proves  that  work  ac- 
complished according  to  the  primitive  law  is  more  use- 
ful than  brotherly  love.  Speak  of  that  love  to  an  igno- 
rant or  a  badly  educated  man,  he  will  not  listen  to  you. 
You  can  see  it  in  his  eyes  and  by  the  expression  of  his 
face :  he  is  half  asleep,  he  yawns  and  is  bored.  He 
endeavors  to  bring  the  conversation  onto  another  topic, 
or  else  he  tells  you  that  he  is  in    a    hurry,  he  prepares 


i3a  TOIL 

to  leave,  and  all  that  has  been  said  to  him  he  either 
will  not  or  cannot  understand  it.  It  was  therefore  use- 
less to  start  that  conversation.  I  have  tried  the  experi- 
ment myself,  I  am  not  inventing. 


XIV 


When,  reading  to  such  a  man  a  few  short  texts  from 
the  Genesis,  you  arrive  at  the  words :  "With  the  sweat 
of  your  brow,  knead  your  bread,"  explain  to  him  that 
that  atonement  was  inflicted  by  God  for  their  original 
sin  and  for  our  actual  ones.  Add  that  God,  in  creating 
heaven  and  earth,  gave  us  no  other  means  of  redeem- 
ing our  crimes,  etc.,  etc.  You  will  see  him  look  up  at 
you  astounded ;  he  will  forget  his  drowsiness  and  en- 
nui, he  will  even  forget  that  he  is  expected  at  home. 
Then  he  will  look  down,  troubled  by  those  truths 
which  he  never  heard  of,  and  of  the  use  he  made  of 
his  youth,  without  thinking  of  the  trouble  God  might 
have  in  store  for  him. 

I  know,  rfeaders,  that  you  will  not  believe  my  words. 
But,  I  swear  it  before  God,  I  have  said  the  truth. 


XV 


He  will  then  look  up  and  show  by  that  that  the  argu- 
ment has    done    its  work.      Then  he  will  ask  questions 


TOIL 


133 


and  continually  bring  the  conversation  back  to  that 
topic.  Lastly,  he  will  tell  his  friends  what  he  has 
learned,  they  will  tell  it  to  theirs,  and  so  on.  Why 
would  he  not  listen  when  you  spoke  of  love?  There  is 
something  mysterious  there. 


XVI 


Note,  however,  that  the  workingmen  alone,  the  labor- 
ers, will  approve  of  your  words.  As  to  those  who  avoid 
work,  and  they  are  numerous  in  your  surroundings,  they 
will  discuss  your  arguments  word  by  word,  and  contra- 
dict them  ;  and,  as  main  argument  in  the  discussion  that 
is  so  repulsive  to  them,  they  will  show  you  the  money 
which  they  take  from  the  poor  peasants  and  which  they 
pretend  to  use  to  help  them.  You  know  very  well, 
readers,  that  the  rich  is  always  triumphant  in  every 
discussion.  It  has  always  been  so  in  the  history  of  hu- 
manity, and  it  always  will  be  until  the  end  of  the  cen- 
turies, as  asserts  Sidrach,  that  man  inspired  by  God : 
"When  the  rich  man  speaks  all  are  silent,  and  they  extol 
his  words  unto  the  sky.  But  the  poor  man  speaks,  and 
they  say,  "who  is  that  one?'" 


XVII 

Have  I  not  proved  irrefutably  that  love  without  work 
is  dead  and  that  work  accomplished  according  to  the  law, 


134  TOIL 

unaided  by  love,  is  alone  alive?  Because  love  is  hid- 
den in  the  work :  the  work  is  the  house  in  which 
love  dwells.  Love  without  work  is  a  body  without  a 
soul.  The  law  is  living  only  when  its  power  is  profit- 
able to  man,  otherwise  it  is  dead.  And  then  that  law 
lives,  but  only  for  those  who  accomplish  it  willingly, 
and  not  for  those  who  refuse  to  submit  their  entire  soul 
to  it,  who  refuse  to  work.  Last  of  all,  the  lazy,  real 
criminals,  are  dead  to  the  law,  just  as  it  is  dead  to 
them. 

As  to  brotherly  love,  we  have  not  to  speak  of  it  here. 

It  is  impossible  to  explain  to  the  world  the  law  of 
work  which  I  taught  myself  without  any  outside  help. 
I  have  felt  its  truth  all  through  my  being.  You  are  not 
aware,  and  you  never  will  be,  that  it  is  so  powerful  that 
it  can,  in  a  few  days,  chain  up  all  mankind  in  one  be- 
lief, in  one  church,  in  one  love,  because  it  is  the  prin- 
ciple of  all  virtues.  It  would  be  well  for  you,  O  you 
of  the  upper  classes,  if  you  held  in  your  hands  the  head 
of  virtue,  but  you  hold  its  tail,  and  it  is  "love"  that  I 
mean  when  I  say  "tail."  Love  gives  you  words  and 
not  actions.  Why  is  it?  Because  gold  has  blinded 
you  and  you  cannot  tell  the  head  from  the  tail. 


XVIII 


Can  you  believe,  readers,  that  he  who  has  welcomed 
the  law  of  wprk  with  as  much  delight  as  I  have  just 
shown  you,  would  do  to  others  what  he  would  not  have 


TOIL 


135 


done  to  him?  Would  he  take,  by  any  means,  the  goods 
of  others?  Can  one  suppose  that,  having  decided  to 
eat  the  bread  work  by  his  own  hands  and  to  lead  an 
honest  life,  he  could  keep  about  him  what  he  has  ac- 
quired dishonestly?  No,  it  is  too  inconsequent  to  be 
conceived  of. 

Do  you  think  that  a  man  whose  conscience  is  so  pure 
could  prevent  himself  from  holding  out  a  helping  hand 
to  his  brothers,  or,  in  other  words,  see  a  hungry  man 
and  not  feed  him,  see  a  thirsty  man  and  not  quench  his 
thirst,  see  a  tired  traveler  and  not  call  him  into  his 
house,  etc.,  etc.  ?  A  pure  conscience  has  the  eyes  of  an 
angel  and  not  those  of  a  man :  nothing  escapes  them. 


XIX 


For  him  who  has  not  tasted  the  delight  of  the  work 
accomplished  according  to  the  primitive  law  which  God 
himself  gave  us  on  creating  heaven  and  earth,  it  is  hard, 
very  hard,  even  to  believe  what  I  have  said.  But  in 
saying  that  the  work  blessed  by  God  is  a  hundred  times 
more  useful  than  love,  I  am  only  making  use  of  the 
right  which  belongs  to  me.  It  is  for  you  to  approve  or 
blame  my  opinions.  And  as  to  judging  which  of  us  is 
right,  God  alone  and  the  ozar  have  that  right. 


XX 


My  readers  must   say  or    at    least    think:     "How  is 
that?     The   entire   universe    and    the  highest  authority 


136  TOIL 

are  based  on  brotherly  love,  like  a  mountain  on  the 
rocks  for  the  world  knows  of  no  virtue  that  is  higher 
than  love.  But  alas !  the  edifice  is  suddenly  crumbling, 
for  its  foundations  have  been  sapped  there  and  there  ;  in 
a  word,  brotherly  love  is  dead.  Love  is  the  last  and 
not  the  first  of  virtues.  If  we  eat  other  people's  bread 
without  having  a  good  reason  for  it,  if  in  that  we  dis- 
obey the  primitive  law,  love  is  then  a  useless  virtue. 
"But,"  some  readers  will  say,  "we  had  vested  our  hope 
in  mouey,  as  in  God,  supposing  that  we  would  find  in 
that  the  temporal  and  eternal  salvation ;  but  that  Bon- 
dareff  does  not  respect  money  and  demands  personal 
work.  Shall  we  tell  him  that  he  lies?  But  we  have 
no  solid  basis  for  the  assertion."  The  inconstant  fortune 
of  man  rests  always  on  a  tottering  throne,  and  it  knows 
not  on  which  side  it  wij  fall.  When  the  time  comes, 
at  which  your  fortune  disappears,  my  readers  will  say 
that  the  proverb  is  right :  "Thunder  does  not  always 
come  from  clouds,  but  often  from  a  heap  of  refuse." 


XXI 


Just  as  the  universe  cannot  live  without  God,  like- 
wise it  cannot  live  without  bread  and  without  laborers. 
It  is  evident  that  the  laborer  takes  the  third  place 
after  God  and  the  bread :  it  is  on  that  triple  founda- 
tion that  rests  the  world,  as  we  will  shoM  plainly  in 
the  following  articles : 


TOIL 


137 


XXII 


God  is  a  ubiquitous  spirit,  in  heaven,  on  the  earth, 
and  under  the  earth.  But  which  is  his  principal  dwell- 
ing? Question  which  has  not  been  solved  up  to  our 
time.  But  now  it  is  evident  that  no  reasonable  man 
is  in  doubt  as  to  the  main  dwelling  of  God,  which  is 
the  bread  and  the  laborer.  Deduct  one  of  those  three 
terms,  God,  the  bread  or  the  laborer,  and  soon  the  uni- 
verse will  disappear. 


XXIII 


Can  we  not  assert  now  that  this  second  trinity  saves 
really  our  souls  from  death?  We  would  not  even  com- 
mit a  sin  in  calling  it  the  first  trinity  because  the 
first  trinity  formed  by  the  Father,  the  Son  and  the 
Holy  Ghost,  is  open  to  criticism  O.ne  half  of  the 
universe  recognizes  it,  while  the  other  does  not,  and 
sees  in  God  a  single  person.  If  the  whole  universe 
had  ecrognized  this  trinity  of  which  I  have  just 
spoken,  and  which  is  composed  of  God,  the  bread    and 


138  TOIL 

the    laborer,  it  would  probably  be  admitted  that    those 
three  persons  are  contained  in  God. 


XXIV 


And  now,  readers,  what  do  you  think  of  what  would 
happen  if  all  of  the  laborers  understood  my  words? 
They  would  not  fly  away  above  the  clouds,  they  would 
not  hasten  to  take  to  themselves  other  work  and  other 
virtues.  By  the  work  of  the  soil  they  would  enrich 
themselves,  and,  moreover,  they  would  enrich  you. 
You  certainly  know  that  all  of  your  delights  depend 
upon  our  work  :  without  it  you  would  not  be  happy. 
But  what  can  be  done  to  make  those  men  continue 
their  work?  It  is  impossible  to  keep  them  where  they 
are.  Ah  !  pity  the  misfortune  of  that  laborer  who  sows 
good  seed  on  a  sterile  soil  and  has  nothing  to  reap]  I 
am  that  laborer;  the  good  seed  is  the  first  command- 
ment of  God  with  its  consequences ;  the  sterile  soil  is 
your  heart  which,  in  the  midst  of  the  comforts  of  this 
world,  turns  away  in  disgust  from  the  work  which  God 
imposed  upon  all  of  us. 


XXV 


I  return  to  what  I  was  saying.     If   God  is  especially 
present  in  the  bread  and  in  the  laborer,  it  seems  to  me 


TOIL  139 

that  there  would  be  a  good  reason  for  honoring  the 
bread  as  the  true  God,  and  the  laborer  as  one  of  the 
most  precious  of  the  creatures  of  heaven  and  earth.  (I 
am  not  speaking  for  myself;  at  my  age  a  man  has  ou-t 
grown  ambition. )  To-day  the  price  of  the  bread  is  of 
one  rouble  and  fort)^  kopeks  a  measure,  while  no  price 
can  be  assigned  to  it  by  the  human  mind !  Once  more, 
it  should  not  be  sold,  but  given  in  extraordinary  circum- 
stances. Bread  is  valued  at  one  rouble  and  forty  ko- 
peks, and  the  laborer  is  valued  still  less  than  that.  He 
is  an  naught  And  still  he  is  one  of  the  three  persons  of 
that  indivisible  trinity  that  saves  us  from  death. 


XXVI 

God  might,  I  admit  it,  feed  man  without  needing  the 
bread  and  laborer  ;but  to  do  that  he  would  be  obliged 
to  change  the  whole  order  of  nature,  and  to  withdraw 
the  word  which  he  pronounced  in  creating  heaven  and 
earth :  -"Let  heaven  and  earth  be."  He  would  have  to 
destroy  all  that  in  order  to  modify  his  laws.  But  for 
whom  should  he  change  the  order  of  the  world  ?  For  the 
lazy?  No,  no.  I  repeat  it:  God,  the  bread  and  the 
laborer,  that  is  the  real  and  indivisible  trinity,  that 
which  saves  us  from  death. 


XXVII 

It  is  for  me  to  ask  whether    a    thing  is  useful  or  not 
for  the  good  of  all ;  it  is  for  you  to  answer  or  not  answer. 


140  TOIL 

Why  then  is  the  laborer  called  a  fool  and  an  idiot,  he 
who  eats  the  bread  of  his  work  and  prevents  the  other 
men  and  the  animals  from  starving  to  death ;  why  is  his 
merit  ignored  to  such  an  extent?  We  are  fools;  I  admit 
it,  fools  in  all  the  strength  of  the  word.  But  listen : 
the  more  one  learns  the  more  one  progresses;  but  it  is 
impossible  to  reach  the  limit  of  progress — perfection. 
As  long  as  his  life  lasts,  man  does  not  reach  the  end  of 
his  science,  and  it  is  only  after  death  that  he  reaches 
perfection  with  a  single  step. 


XXVIII 

Besides  that,  the  more  you  learn,  the  better  you  can 
see  your  intellectual  faults.  Since  then  you  lower,  as 
much  as  you  can,  that  man  who  feeds  himself  with  his 
work  and  feeds  his  brothers  at  the  same  time,  as  well 
as  the  animals,  what  name  will  you  apply  then  to  the 
one  who,  far  from  feeding  the  others,  lives  lazily  on  the 
result  of  their  work,  and,  what  is  worse  still,  sucks  the 
blood  of  the  poor  in  order  to  get  money?  What  will 
you  call  hinv?  A  brigand  ?  No ;  a  brigand  comes  un- 
der the  scope  of  the  law,  while  that  one  is  respected 
and  honored.  All  of  the  humiliating  epithets  you  have 
applied  them  to  us,  which  is  the  one  then  that  can  be 
applied  to  the  lazy?  But  what  is  the  use  of  question- 
ing you?  A  stone  might  answer  me,  but  you,  readers, 
you  will  not. 


XXIX 

If  a  great  famine  rages  for  a  year  only  in  Russia,  every 
one  will  die  of  hunger.     But  where   is    the  wheat   that 


TOIL  141 

had  been  left  over  from  the  preceding  years  and  which 
the  "fools"  had  accumulated?  "The  intelligent  people 
have  eaten  it, "you  will  answer.  Can  one  believe  that 
an  intelligent  man  dared  to  commit  such  a  crime?  Eat 
the  bread  that  belongs  to  the  ignorant,  trample  broth- 
erly love  under  foot  as  well  as  the  primitive  command- 
ment; it  is  almost  incredible. 


XXX 


The  love  of  bread  is  the  strongest  instinct  of  man, 
and  still  what  he  disdains  the  most  is  the  bread-labor. 
There  are  actually  in  Russia  millions  of  children  vdio 
are  being  taught  to  read,  that  they  may  more  easily 
set  that  work  aside  and  eat  bread  for  nothing,  that  they 
may  ride  on  the  backs  of  the  laborers.  If  that  was  not 
their  intention,  they  would  never  consent  to  learn  and 
their  parents  would  not  send  them  to  school.  To  wish 
not  to  live  without  doing  anything,  that  would  be  a 
crime,  a  suicide !  He  will  therefore  not  work,  that 
condition  is  too  shameful. 

Whence  comes  that  state  of  things?  From  the  fact 
that  the  divine  law  :  "With  the  sweat  of  your  brow, 
knead  your  bread,"  has  not  been  explained  to. the  young 
and  intelligent  souls,  and  from  the  fact  that  no  place 
has  been  reserved  for  it  in  the  books  of  science.  For 
that  is  how  men  would  have  understood  from  their 
very  youth  that  they  must  try  to  eat  the  bread  of  their 
own  work  and  live  honestly. 


142  TOIL 


XXXI 


Work,  the  virtue  of  virtues,  is  mentioned  neither  in 
the  alphabets  nor  in  the  books  of  high  science.  The 
teachers  never  allude  to  it,  because  they  lead  them- 
selves an  idle  life.  The  child  can  therefore  learn  noth- 
ing good  in  the  schools.  He  will  be  like  the  earthen- 
ware that  always  retains  the  odor  of  the  first  liquid  that 
was  put  into  it.  How  many  examples  prove  it !  The 
historians  tell  that  the  Roman  emperor,  Caligula,  was 
so  cruel,  that,  not  satisfied  with  taking  the  life  of  those 
who  displeased  him,  he  would  even  drink  the  blood  of 
his  victims.  The  daughter  of  Darius  liked  nothing  bet- 
ter than  snake.  How  can  one  explain  those  facts? 
Caligula  had  been  brought  up  by  a  cruel  woman;  the 
daughter  of  Darius  had  had  for  nurse  a  woman  whose 
favorite  food  was  snake. 


XXXH 


The  theologians  pretend  that  God  offers  the  milk  of 
wisdom  as  food  for  children  and  that  the  devil  offers 
them  the  milk  of  impiety.  If,  through  the  fault  of  the 
parents,  the  child  drinks  the  milk  of  the  devil,  no  other 


TOIL  143 

food  will  please  him  afterwards,  just  as    Caligula  liked 
blood  and  the  daughter  of  Darius  was  fond  of  snakes. 

In  that  case  what  can  the  laborers  hope  for?  Let  us 
always  expect  the  worst.  But  if  the  men  learn  to  read 
and  write,  who  will  feed  them?  That  is  an  important 
problem  which  nobody  is  willing  to  solve. 


XXXIII 


I  request  you,  readers,  not  to  forget  that  I  asked 
to  you  humbly  with  bowed  head,  standing  sadly  on  the 
threshold  of  your  door.  But  you  are  occupying  the 
seat  of  honor  at  the  table  covered  with  the  results  of 
our  work.  You  will  not  answer  me  ?  Why  is  it,  unless 
because  you  see  that  you  are  in  every  way  guilty  before 
God,  before  man  and  before  yourself,  which  means  your 
conscience.  If  you  tried  to  justify  yourself  you  would 
fall  still  deeper  into  sin ;  if  you  tried  to  contradict  me, 
your  obstinacy  would  be  an  outrage,  not  against  me,  but 
against  God,  against  bread  and  against  your  conscience. 


XXXIV 


You  see  now,  upper  classes,  that  the   laborer  is  your 
second  father,  we  can  even  say,  without  fear  of  sinning. 


144  TOIL 

that  he  is  your  first  father.  Remember  that  all  you  eat 
at  table  results  from  our  work.  In  a  word,  we  feed 
you  as  a  father  feeds  his  children. 

Nothing  more  contrary  to  the  law  than  the  excuse 
you  give  by  saying:  "I  pay  for  the  bread."*  But 
where  did  you  get  the  money?  That  money  which  you 
keep  near  you,  is  it  not  the  fruit  of  our  labor  ?  You 
could  only  win  our  forgiveness  by  a  willing  consent  to 
eat  the  bread  of  your  own  work.  "It  is  impossible," 
you  will  answer  again,  "how  could  all  men  do  the  same 
work?" 


XXXV 


The  law  of  work  is  incomprehensible  if  it  is  com- 
pared with  love,  because  the  single  word  Love  suffices 
alone  to  explain  all  of  the  mysteries,  while  it  takes 
numerous  developments  to  render  perfectly  plain  the 
meaning  of  the  primitive  law.  I  have  already  written 
nearly  300  articles  to  discuss  it,  and  I  doubt  whether  I 
have  entirely  convinced  my  readers  of  the  necessity  of 
the  work.  How  can  one  present  in  a  few  words  the 
virtue  which  is  attached  to  the  law  which  God  gave 
when  he  created  heaven  and  earth !  And  then  the 
greatest    of   curses,  the    obstacle    that   takes    all  of  its 

*  I  mean  by  "I"  all  of  our  class,  men,  women  and  children.  I  am 
not  speaking  in  my  own  name,  but  in  the  name  of  all  of  my  compan- 
ions. 

ToU-W 


TOIL  145 

strength  from  that  law,  is  money.  It  is  money  that 
blinds  man  and  makes  him  insane.  Listen  to  them  an- 
swer simply :  "I  pay  for  the  bread,  I  pay  for  the 
bread."  That  is  their  only  answer.  Is  it  then  possi- 
ble to  discuss  with  them? 


XXXVI 


It  is  time  to  end  my  discourse  or   rather  my  sermon. 

At  the  time  at  which  I  am  writing  the  government 
has  not  yet  thought  of  the  law  of  work.  No  rescript 
has  explained  its  strength ;  it  has  not  preached  to  its 
subjects  the  love  of  work  in  spite  of  the  pressing  re- 
quests which  I  addressed  to  it  and  which  it  has  not 
noticed.  How  I  pity  its  blindness  !  God  is  witness  that 
I  am  telling  the  truth.  The  individual  is  excusable  if 
he  is  not  aware  of  certain  things :  but  is  it  admissible 
that  the  government  should  hide  from  the  people  the 
greatest  happiness  that  exists  in  heaven  and  on  earth? 
[  think  not. 


XXXVII 


I    have  just  learned  this  minute  that  the  censors  will 
not  allow  the   publication   of    my  sermon.     Why?   ist, 


146  TOIL 

Because  the  authority  wishes  also  to  avoid  the  horrible 
bread  labor;  2nd,  Because  it  hates  us  who  feed  it.  "Let 
them  suffer  with  hunger  and  cold,  those  sixty  millions 
of  laborers,  as  long  as  we  and  our  equals  are  happy ! " 
And  if  you  speak  to  them  of  brotherly  love,  they  will 
show  themselves  greater  philanthropists  than  you  are; 
but  always  words,  never  actions! 


XXXVIII 


The  state  I  have  spoken  of  has  existed  for  five  years 
already.  Before  one  of  you  we  are  like  sparrows  be- 
fore an  eagle. 

With  a  single  word,  with  a  single  stroke  of  liis  pen 
he  can  crush  us ;  and  he  has  really  crushed  and  anni- 
hilated us.  What  millions  of  men  he  has  oppressed ! 
I  was  saying  that,  thanks  to  the  government,  laziness 
will  blossom  and  grow  everywhere;  the  work  and  the 
bread  will  be  lowered  and  despised.  It  is  done.  You 
see  what  truth  there  is  in  my  predictions  and  what  ex- 
actitude in  my  words ! 


XXXIX 


The  blood  and  tears  of  men  have  attested  to  the  truth 
of  all  of  the  commandments   in    the   Old  and  the  New 


TOIL  147 

Testament.  But  in  favor  of  the  primitive  command- 
ment which  is  the  principal  of  all  others  and  of  brotherly 
love,  no  one  ever  shed  a  tear  or  a  drop  of  blood  :  no  one 
has  attested  its  truth.  That  is  why  it  has  always  been 
looked  upon  as  false ;  that  is  why  nobody  recognizes 
it  in  the  universe;  that  is  why  it  is  rejected  with  an- 
ger as  the  censors  have  just  prove.  Did  Jesus  Christ 
assert  it  by  his  death?  No.  He  said  in  the  Gospel: 
"Look  at  the  birds  of  the  sky,  etc. "  That  shows  that 
Jesus  rejected  like  all  others  the  law  of  work,  because 
from  his  very  childhood  he  had  seen  no  virtue  in  it, 
and  that  he  considered  it  even  the  greatest  of  misfor- 
tunes. 


XL 


It  is  seen  form  all  that  precedes  that  heaven  intended 
me  to  attest  of  the  truth  of  that  law  and  prove  it  with 
my  blood  and  my  tears.  My  blood  dries  in  my  veins 
at  the  sight  of  the  corruption  of  the  world ;  as  to  tears, 
they  fall  not  from  my  eyes  (a  too  powerful  constitution 
prevents  me  from  weeping,)  but  they  fall  from  my 
heart. 


XLI 


I  wonder  myself  why  I  put  such  ardor  in  developing 
the  meaning   of   the    primitive    commandment    in    the 


148  TOIL 

midst  of  all  the  cares  and  troubles  that  surround  a 
peasant  such  as  I  am.  Will  the  world  be  grateful  to 
me  for  all  the  pain  I  have  endured?  Will  I  receive 
for  my  discovery,  which  interests  the  whole  world,  a 
reward  similar  to  those  distributed  to  the  inventors  of 
trifles?  It  is  useless  even  to  think  of  it.  My  greatest 
reward  will  be  to  avoid  punishment :  for  I  am  making 
sharp  attacks.  But  against  whom  are  they  directed? 
Think  over  that  important  question.  Why  should 
those  threats  trouble  me,  while  I  am  feeling  an  invisi- 
ble and  mysterious  hand  that  pushes  me  forward  on  the 
road  I  am  following,  and  that  it  is  really  in  spite  of 
myself  that  I  work? 


XLII 

I  used  to  hope  that  this  work  would  win  for  me  a  re- 
ward from  God  in  the  future  life,  although  I  have  not 
accomplished  it  willingly.  But  now  very  learned  men, 
knowing  the  goal  I  am  aiming  at,  come  and  say  to  me : 
"You  have  not  worked  through  love  for  your  brothers, 
but  through  love  for  yourself.  To  love  your  brothers 
and  love  yourself  at  the  same  time,  it  is  to  offend  God 
and  hate  your  brothers."  Their  arguments  seemed  to 
be  the  pure  and  simple  truth;  one  would  think  that 
God  himself  inspired  them. 


XLIII 

To  avoid  all  of  these  difficulties,  I    see  but  one  way : 
If  my  work  is  divided  into  ten    parts    and    I    am    only 


TOIL  149 

credited  with  the  tenth  part,  I  will  be  satisfied.  If 
even  that  was  taken  from  me,  I  would  not  be  injured, 
for  I  am  convinced  that  in  the  next  life  I  will  not  need 
to  be  judged  by  God.  My  conscience  will  be  my  judge, 
and  it  will  not  torture  me  with  remorse,  because  I  have 
always  tried  to  act  righteously.  Still,  if  there  are  any 
doubtful  cases,  I  will  submit  to  the  appreciation  of 
God. 


XLIV 


The  readers  will  perhaps  want  to  know  the  sorrows 
that  dried  my  blood.     Here  they  are : 

1.  I  am  not  accustomed  to  writing,  as  you  can  see 
by  my  style.  I  have  been  obliged  to  write  the  same 
article  over  several  times.  One  can  judge  of  the  work 
I  have  had. 

2.  I  composed  this  sermon  in  the  midst  of  the  irk- 
some work  of  the  country :  I  go  to  the  fields  during  the 
day,  and,  in  the  evening,  I  write  with  difficulty,  be- 
cause I  see  badly,  even  with  glasses. 

3.  If  I  had  been  rich,  I  would  have  had  assistants, 
preceptors,  advisers.  But,  although  I  am  not  entirely 
poor,  my  possessions  are  very  modest.  That  is  why  I 
was  very  badly  welcomed  every  time  I  spoke  of  my 
plan. 

4.  IS  my  family  large,  in  other  words,  how  many 
people  are  there  who  are  working  in  my  house  ?     There 


ISO  TOIL 

are  seven  of  us :  myself,  my  wife,  my  eldest  son  and 
his  wife,  and  three  little  children.  We  are  far  from 
being  all  able  to  work. 

Our  fortune  does  not  allow  us  to  take  workmen,  and 
then,  as  I  have  just  said,  we  should  not  eat  the  bread 
prepared  by  the  work  of  others. 

5.  For  the  last  four  years  (we  are  in  December, 
1886,)  I  have  been  addressing  requests  to  the  govern- 
ment in  which  I  express  all  that  I  have  in  my  heart.  I 
have  asked  for  permission  to  publish  my  sermon. 
What  has  been  the  result  ?  I  must  have  addressed  my- 
self to  blind  and  deaf  people :  they  did  not  answer.  If 
at  least  they  had  but  said  "Yes"  or  "No." 

6.  Lastly,  what  has  dried  my  blood  more  than  all 
is  that  sixty  millions  of  Russians  are  suffering  and  in 
misery  because  they  are  not  aware  of  the  law  of  the 
work.  Why?  In  order  that  some  may  live  in  comfort 
and  laziness  and  enjoy  every  earthly  pleasure,  and  they 
are  such  that  I  do  not  want  to  speak  of  them  before 
honest  people. 

Have  I  exposed  all  of  my  troubles  and  cares,  all  the 
pain  and  anguish  that  I  suffer?  No,  for  it  is  impossi- 
ble to  tell  all. 


XLV 


Nothing  is  more  true :  heaven  had  designed  me  to 
seal  with  my  blood  and  wash  with  my  tears  the  truth 
which  I  preach.  I  have  sealed  it  with  my  blood  and 
washed    it    with   my   tears.     Perhaps    after   my  death 


TOIL 


151 


the  commandment  which  I  proclaimed  will  blossom. 
No,  I  cannot  believe  that  it  will  be  otherwise.  What 
is  the  obstacle  that  could  oppose  its  way?  I  have  said 
the  truth  :my  prophecy  will  not  vanish  without  leaving 
any  traces.  Am  I  trying  to  acquire  glory  ?  No.  I  am 
too  old,  and  what  good  would  it  do  me?  To-day  or 
to-morrow  I  will  fall  into  my  dark  tomb,  closed  to  the 
light  of  the  sun :  what  good  would  it  do  me  then  to 
seek  for  glory? 


XLVI 


My  work  is  now  done.  I  have  drawn  the  primitive 
law  from  the  hell  where  men  had  cast  it  in  the  begin- 
ning of  the  centuries.  I  have  bathed  it  with  my  tears 
and  sealed  it  with  my  blood,  as  I  have  just  said,  and  I 
have  given  it  into  the  hands  of  the  most  powerful 
man  in  the  world ;  I  have  given  it  to  the  czar  of  czars, 
to  the  monarch  of  monarchs,  to  the  king  of  kings,  to 
the  emperor. 

Whatever  may  happen,  I  have  done  my  duty.  It  is 
for  you,  O  czar,  to  act  according  to  your  power  and 
according  to  your  will. 


XLVII 

One  word  more,  and  I  am  through.     During  the  few 
days  of  life  that  remain  for  me,  I  will  put  myself  in  the 


152  TOIL 

tomb,  and  I  will  raise  above  it  a  monument  in  harmony 
with  the  primitive  law  :  "With  the  sweat  of  your  brow, 
knead  your  bread."  I  will  build  a  monument  worthy 
of  that  precept  more  precious  than  all  of  the  earthly 
treasures.  I  will  expose  my  design  in  the  following 
articles. 


XLVIII 

I  will  make,  I,  Bondareff,  a  will,  written,  and  not 
verbal,  in  which  I  will  say  to  my  son  Daniel :  "At  my 
death,  when  you  lay  me  in  the  coffin,  you  will  put 
these  papers  in  my  hands.  God,  who  sees  everything, 
the  surface  of  the  earth  and  its  depths,  will  know  why 
I  hold  these  papers  in  my  hands.  He  may  judge  of 
the  contents  when  he  will  call,  on  the  day  of  judgment, 
all  of  our  enemies  who,  having  read  my  doctrine,  made 
no  effort  to  propagate  it.  He  will  also  call  up  the  pro- 
tectors of  the  law  of  work,  and  he  will  reward  them. "  I 
assure  you  with  all  my  soul  that  my  prophecy  will  be 
accomplished.  If  you  offend  a  man  you  will  certainly 
be  punished.  In  denying  the  law  of  the  work  you  are 
offending  millions  of  men  and  their  children  and  all  of 
their  descendants.  Do  you  think  that  your  sin  will  be 
remitted  on  account  of  that  blind  fortune  who  protects 
you?    An  atheist   alone   could    be    in   doubt  about  it. 


XLIX 

With  us  it  is  customary  for  men    to    carry  the  dead  to 
the  cemetery.     But  I  will    order    my  son   to   carry  my 


TOIL  153 

body  on  a  chariot  as  far  as  the  tomb.  Man  is  too  great 
a  hypocrite,  he  shall  not  touch  my  remains.  Let  one  of 
us  try  to  win  during  his  life  the  respect  of  his  neigh- 
bor, he  will  get  nothing  but  hatred ;  the  greatest  mis- 
fortunes are  called  down  upon  his  head  and  he  is  dis- 
dained ;  but  as  soon  as  he  is  dead,  he  has  no  longer 
any  need  for  the  respect  of  man,  and  his  enemies  carry 
him  to  his  last  resting  place,  pretending  to  weep.  Ah  ! 
if  that  man  could  see  what  is  happening  at  his  funeral, 
he  would  hardly  be  satisfied.  Man  is  a  hypocrite.  I 
now  hate  all  of  mankind,  and  that  is  whyl  will  not 
have  them  touch  my  coffin  after  lam  dead. 

My  criticisms,  at  times  too  cutting,  were  not  ad- 
dressed to  individuals  who  were  powerless,  but  simply 
simply  to  the  representatives  of  the  supreme  govern- 
ment. These  are  the  worst  of  our  enemies.  They  are 
preachers  who  only  feed  themselves  and  allow  the  flock 
which  God  entrusted  to  them  to  die  of  starvation* 


If  a  man  passed  from  death  to  life,  his  neighbor 
would  not  even  carry  him  to  a  chariot ;  but  when  he 
passes  from  life  to  death,  he  carries  him  on  his  arms ! 
And  if  there  should  be  an  occasion  of  bringing  one 
from  death  back  to  life,  it  would  not  be  done  through 
brotherly  love,  but  in  the  hope  of  winning  a  reward » 
consisting  either  in  money  or  public  praise. 


154  TOIL 


LI 


I  will  order  my  son  not  to  bury  me  in  the  cemetery, 
but  in  the  soil  which,  worked  by  my  own  arms,  has 
given  me  my  daily  bread.  *  I  will  ask  him  not  to  fill 
my  tomb  with  clay  or  sand,  but  with  fertile  earth ;  not 
to  make  a  mound,  but  to  leave  it  so  that  nothing  will 
show  the  place  where  I  am  buried.  And  lastly  I  will 
advise  him  to  continue  to  sow  every  year  at  that  spot 
the  wheat  I  have  lived  on.  Later  the  ground  may  be- 
long to  some  one  else  and  in  that  way,  until  the  end  of 
the  centuries,  the  bread  of  life  will  be  gathered  over 
my  tomb. 

It  is  thus  that  will  be  accomplished  the  prophecy  of 
Job  :  "You  will  enter  the  sepulchre  in  your  old  age, 
like  the  ripe  wheat  or  like  the  sheaves  are  stored  away 
in  their  time."f  Such  is  the  monument  which  I 
prefer  to  your  thousands  of  monuments.  From  this  very 
minute  I  choose  the  spot  of  my  tomb ;  I  stretch  myself 
out  in  the  ditch.  I  am  alive  to-day — but  the  future 
does  not  belong  to  us. 

*  One  of  the  most  famous  Russian  sectarians,  the  inspirer  of  Tol- 
stoi, the  moujik  Soutaief,  promises  also  to  dispense  with  the  ministry 
of  the  priest,  and  to  be  buried  in  profane  ground,  but  for  other  reasons 
than  Bondareff .  '  'A  grandson  is  born  to  him,  he  refuses  to  let  it  be 
baptised;  another  one  dies,  he  wishes  to  bury  it  in  his  garden  under 
the  pretext  that  all  earth  is  holy:  and,  as  he  is  forbidden  to,  he  hides 
the  body  under  the  floor.     He  marries  his  daughter  himself,  etc. — " 

f  The  men  will  tell  of  my  funeral  from  century  to  century  and 
many  laborers  will  follow  my  example.     Some  of    you,  O  noble,  O 


TOIL  155 

Here  I  end  my  book. 

And  now,  readers,  good-bye,  until  our  next  meeting, 
if  not  in  this  world,  at  least,  in  the  other.  But  I  hope 
that  through  your  eloquence  and  skill  you  will  justify 
yourself  better  before  God  than  I  could  do. 

Timothy   Michailovitch   Bondareff. 


wealthy  people,  may  wish  also  to  be  buried  in  the  ground  where  man 
sows  the  bread. 


OFTHE 


UK 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PAGE. 

Introduction,  by  the  French  Translator 5 

Of  what  Toil  consists 5 

The  peasant  Bondareff  Inspired  the  Social  The- 
ories of  Tolstoi — The  Two  Laws  of  Humanity: 
Manual  Labor  for  Men,  Motherhood  for  Women: 
Tolstoi^s  Critique  on  Bondareff — The  Old  Testa- 
ment and  the  Gospel 13 

How  THE  Theory  of  Manual  Labor  should  be 
Interpreted — Tilling  the  Soil,  the  Social  Rem- 
edy— Extent  and  Consequences  of  this  Theory. .        16 
The  Book  of  Bondareff — Remarks  on  its  Transla- 
tion          17 

TOIL  BY  LEO  TOLSTOI  f\ND  TIMOTHY  BONDAREFF 

PART  I 
Toil  and  Bondareff 's  Theory,  by  Count  Leo  Tolstoi       21 

PART  II 

Toil,  according  to  the  Bible,  by  the  peasant  Bond- 
areff        43 

I.     Introduction — Life   of   Bondareff — Object    of 
his  work 45 


158  CONTENTS 

11.     Toil,  according  to  the  Bible 49 

APPENDICES 

Love  and  Labor 123 

Bondareff  's  Will 152 


NIVKRSITV    t'l     (AhlloKMA    I.IKKAU'l 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW 


HIHM 


X    loH 


*;#  iai& 


so* 

SEP  28  1942 


3O 


APR    4  1959 


^^PrsiJcg 


IN  STACKS 

MAR  1 8  1961 


24B5 


-2PK 


30m-6,'14 


U.C.BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 


